


Good Night From The Gummi Ship

by foxdreams



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: A Truly Wild Concept Taken Seriously, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anxiety, Banter, Established Relationship, Extremely Specific Profession AU, Glasses Riku, Improper Use of Undersea Research Labs, Kairi is fun and the destiny trio are friends like god intended, Kissing, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Nudibranches, Scuba Diving, The Marine Biologist AU You Needed But Didn't Know You Wanted, bed sharing, soft boys in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22041043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxdreams/pseuds/foxdreams
Summary: It was just hard to put on a brave face when it felt like Sora could feel every square inch of pressure resting squarely on his shoulders. How could he save the station in a few hours, when they’d been trying for years?The reef spread out before them on the large screen, bubbles floating up every so often; it was a tapestry of bright colors: mustard yellows and bright red peaks of cauliflower corals intermixed with vibrant lionfish and schools of rainbow-and-silver triggerfish, complete with the freshly risen sun splashed across across the sandy depths of the sea floor in wide rivers of light.If they failed, today, Sora thought, it could be his last chance to see it.So...they just wouldn’t fail. That was what he would choose to believe.---(Or: Sora, Riku, and Kairi are marine biologists banding together to try and save an undersea research station, Sora is oblivious, Riku & Kairi are up to something...and also, there are sea slugs. So many sea slugs.)
Relationships: Kairi & Riku & Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Riku & Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 35
Kudos: 179





	Good Night From The Gummi Ship

**Author's Note:**

> Listen. Sometimes an Extremely Specific Profession KH AU has one parent, and sometimes it has ~30 parents on twitter, and that's okay.
> 
> A few months back, I tweeted this as a joke:
>
>> Soriku au where they’re married marine researchers studying nudibranchs. This will be my self serving niche profession au. I just want sora being fascinated by tiny little water dragons
>> 
>> — Kristin @ RE:MIND HYPE PART TWO (@dispositiongay) [June 20, 2019](https://twitter.com/dispositiongay/status/1141705580500979712?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> 
> And the idea stuck in my brain, grew roots, and has gone through many changes and upheavals until we arrived at the fic you're about to read.
> 
> (If you don't know what a nudibranch is, do yourself a favor and google a few, then come back. I have never met anyone who didn't love one on sight, and I guarantee it will improve your experience with this fic.)
> 
> This fic was truly an experience to write, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)
> 
> If you would like to listen as you read, here is the accompanying playlist on Spotify: [Goodnight From the Gummi Ship](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5yIDN3xAsg9F2cXt751Jut?si=PXLtez8mTCumNIFJzUnMzA)
> 
> If you're curious about any of the concepts I've borrowed for this fic, stick around to the end for more notes and links. Thank you to kai and Paion for betaing, and my writing buddies for all the encouragement.

The low beeping of machinery and their breathing filled the dark room, the only light a smattering of LEDs set into the walls of the cabin in strategic places to prevent tumbling off the ladder in the middle of the night—a real and ever-present possibility, because the ocean floor during winter was dark a lot more than usual. 

Sora was  _ not _ happy to be awake, hand snaking out of the pile of Riku’s torso, Riku’s limbs, his  _ own _ limbs, and every blanket they could snatch from the research base to slam down on his phone and stop the alarm.

“Sora.  _ Elbows _ ,” Riku slurred, twitching lethargically away from one of the bony limbs that had buried themselves in his gut.

“Oops—sorry, Riku.” Sora pulled his arms back in, phone in hand and tilted down so the glare didn’t hurt as much as he tried to make the large numbers on the screen  _ mean _ something beyond gibberish, with mixed results.

There just was  _ not _ enough space for two people in the tiny station beds, so they often found a precarious position involving Sora gluing himself to Riku’s side with his head pillowed on his boyfriend's chest and their legs tangled so thoroughly that it was hard to tell, when the limbs inevitably fell asleep, whose was whose. All the same, they hadn’t slept alone in four years, and they weren’t about to let a simple thing like  _ bunks _ stop them.

“What  _ time _ is it?” Riku croaked. His voice was rough and sandpapered from the lack of sleep and filtered, dry air.

“Half past ass-o-clock on Tuesday,” Sora mumbled, finally dropping the phone to burrow back into Riku’s chest, mindful of his elbows this time. His shirt was  _ blissfully  _ soft and he  _ really _ wanted to rub his face against it like a cat. “Also known as almost-designated-stream-time.”

“ _ God _ ,” Riku groaned. “Whose idea was that again?”

“Roxas, I think,” Sora said tiredly. His brain was still vacillating between asleep and awake, and he remembered having such  _ nice _ dreams about milkshakes. It had been so  _ long _ since he’d had a real  _ milkshake _ .  _ Days _ . Almost everything was canned and powdered and microwaved on the station. The idea of getting up seemed so distant when Riku was so  _ warm _ , with his arms cradled around Sora’s waist like that. 

“The stream’s important to you when you’re awake. Changing the world or something, I can’t remember the speech. I’m too—“ Sora stopped to yawn hugely, “sleepy.”

“Well, I hate him. Call it off,” Riku said gruffly, curling up to tangle his face in Sora’s shoulder.

“No you don’t, you’re best friends,” Sora mumbled. His eyelids were glued together in a  _ really _ unpleasant sandy way as he tried in vain to open them, and Riku’s hair was tickling at his neck.

“And? I can multitask.”

“He says the same thing about you, it’s really cute.” Sora smirked, his hands drifting up to card idly through Riku’s hair, which was getting long again; he was wearing it up while he worked more and more, but he let it down to sleep, which Sora was selfishly  _ very _ glad for, because it was  _ very _ silky. Riku tilted his head into the contact, exhaling.

“ _ Dolphin researchers _ ,” Riku said with disdain. “I bet he never has to write  _ proposals  _ or do _ fundraising streams _ . I bet they just hand him checks if he so much as breathes.”

“He had a point with this, I guess. Xion told me we jumped another thousand viewers last week. She thinks we could really go independent soon. Apparently  _ the people  _ like us.”

“Good thing too, since the Restoration Committee can’t exactly help us either.”

“You know they rejected my latest proposal this week?” Sora’s nails found Riku’s scalp, which produced a pleased hum.

Riku’s brows furrowed over the horrendously orange starfish sleep mask he wore. “You didn’t tell me about that one.”

“Yeah, that’s because it was sixty-five pages of lovingly drawn  _ Opisthobranchia _ with speech bubbles that said ‘fuck the ecosystem’ next to them. Naminé helped a little.” He snorted.

“ _ Sora _ ,” Riku scolded, but it was a little strained, and a little less threatening with smiley face starfish staring back at him.

“ _ What _ ? I wasn’t convinced they were even reading them anymore.” He yawned, wide, his whole jaw cracking with the motion in the quiet room. “They’re not, by the way. Got the exact same rejection letter as always.”

“Can’t imagine  _ why _ ,” Riku said drily.

He pressed a kiss to Riku’s throat, lazily, curling his hand around his middle. “Kairi says it’s because our research isn’t  _ sexy _ enough.” Sora made a face. “Whatever. I think nudibranch predation and coral propagation is  _ super _ sexy.”

Riku pulled the sleep mask up to rub at his eyes, arms resettling around Sora’s waist once he was done. “She’s right, probably. The government only wants to hear about the species with big sad eyes that they can put on t-shirts and sad commercials to convince people to care about marine dumping.”

Sora pulled away to rise the few inches the bunk allowed and looked genuinely upset. 

“But—nudibranchs—“

“Are the soul of the reef system. I  _ know _ , Sora,” Riku said, taking his hands solemnly, and staring up into what was probably a blurry face with two fuzzy blue spots for eyes. He had thrown his glasses somewhere during the long night of research and he was likely working with a serious lack of depth perception. Sora knew this from unfortunate experience. “You know I feel the same way. But—as much as it  _ pains _ me to say this—Roxas is probably right. We need you to do the stream.”

Sora sighed. “I  _ know _ , I just wish people didn’t need a human to make them care about GUMMI.”

Riku trailed his hands from Sora’s hands, up his arms, to his shoulders and down again in a mindless rhythm that immediately made him sleepy again. “To be fair, you’re definitely cuter than a dolphin, so. I get it.”

Sora made a face that Riku could more feel than see, tucked between his arms and chest. “Look who’s talking. Besides, you guys are  _ way _ smarter than I am, you could be leading them too.”

Riku shook his head. “That’s not true and you  _ know _ it. You have all the charisma; you make people care. That’s a  _ gift _ , Sora,” Riku said. “You can connect with  _ anyone _ no matter where they are, and people don’t feel stupid for asking you questions, which is half the battle. You’re probably the reason we even got the funding for this trip.”

Sora squinted. “Hold on. It’s too early for you to be this sappy.” He rose up on an elbow to poke at his boyfriend's chest. “What’s going on?”

“ _ Nothing _ ,” Riku said too  _ quickly—suspiciously _ fast, then enfolded Sora’s hand in his to stop the assault.

“ _ Okay _ ,” Sora said slowly. “But I’m getting it out of you eventually.” He wagged a finger threateningly. “You can’t get far in a one hundred fifty foot station and I know where you sleep,” he said, gesturing at their shared, cramped bunk. The ceiling was plastered with photos of sea slugs (with googly eyes—Sora’s addition) and coral pulled from old textbooks that Riku liked to look at during his bouts of insomnia. On the far wall was a row of photos of them and Kairi: pulling sea turtles for tagging during their college days, or grinning with their arms around each other on the Destiny Islands beach in wetsuits and gear.

“I’m counting on that,” Riku said, and slid his other hand to the back of Sora’s neck to pull him down for a lazy, lingering kiss that left them both grinning stupidly. 

“Distracting me won’t work forever,” Sora mumbled against his lips.

“is it working right now?”

“Depends. You gonna tell me what that was for?” Sora murmured, folding his arms over Riku’s chest. He was making the prospect of leaving  _ very _ difficult, suddenly.

His eyes were half-lidded, fond and so  _ green  _ beneath silver lashes as he blinked sleepily. “Nothing. Just love you.”

“Love you too, nerd,” Sora said, and pressed a kiss to his cheek, his nose, the corner of his mouth, soft enough to tickle, and he knew that because Riku was  _ notoriously _ ticklish and was twitching by the end of his assault.

Riku abruptly pushed Sora's face away as he tried to swoop in for another. “Sora. Now  _ you’re _ the one trying to get out of getting up,” he said sternly, like he was trying to convince himself. “I remember the speech now. ‘You’re changing hearts one person at a time.’”

“That’s worthy of a corny t-shirt.”

“ _ Sora _ .”

“Ri-ku,” Sora shot back, his mouth twitching with the withheld smile.

“ _ Go _ . Go on without me,” Riku moaned dramatically, throwing an arm over his head to block out the light and Sora’s attempts. One green eye peeked out at Sora through a crack. “Buzz me if I’m not up by the time Kairi puts the coffee on. She could wake the dead with that stuff and I need that kind of power right now.”

Sora regretfully extricated himself from the tangle of limbs, shivering in the conditioned air of the cabin. He missed Riku’s warmth already. Sometimes he couldn’t believe how  _ lucky _ he was. “Roger that, sleeping beauty.”

He expertly dodged the blanket Riku chucked from the bunk, dodging one additional projectile neck pillow in the process as he pulled on sweatpants and slipped on his shoes.

  


Making cocoa fifty-seven feet below sea level didn’t really quench Sora’s desire for the  _ real _ thing (with whipped cream and foamed milk), but it was leagues better than nothing. It took him three tries to stab the on button of the kettle through his bleary-eyed haze, and another two tries to rip open the package of powder with his teeth, mourning the lack of fresh milk and the fact he was too much of a baby to handle black coffee like everyone else on board.

It was soothing to be the only one awake and walking around the tiny station, dimmed lights guiding his way from his room to the kitchen and out to the observation area while he stirred his poor excuse for cocoa. He passed a couple of portholes on either side that faced out to the ocean on the way. They were too dark to see out of, at night—that was what the ROVs were for—but it was almost relaxing to watch the clumps of zooplankton drifting by on the sea currents like undersea clouds. Sometimes, they’d get lucky and see the bioluminescent kind, which glowed like tiny stars.

Sora treasured the pre-sunrise hours in the lab because it was time just for himself; it was much like the precious late night hours of a sleepover, knowing everyone he cared about was safe and only a few feet away. 

With the first rays of dawn breaking the surface, painting the ridges and hills of multi-colored coral, shimmering off the scales of the brilliant fish who called the reef home— it was breathtaking. Hopefully he wouldn’t have to wait  _ too _ long to see it.

There was an entire, massive, incredible world on the other side of the pressurized hull, most of it unexplored and waiting to be seen by human eyes. How many other people on earth had shared this view, besides the people already on board? 

Sora loved it  _ fiercely _ . He always had, even before he’d finally won the chance to see it, with Riku at his side.

Sora’s hands trailed the metal surface of the observation deck, the bite of the steel against his warm palms somehow comforting. The desk faced a wall of large window-like ports with several computers lined up in front of them at intervals. Handwritten and typed notes and photo printouts were scattered all over between the desk and the cork boards along the opposite wall, mostly from Riku—who always claimed he “thought better with a pencil in his hand”. Which was how he often wound up with pencils in his hair, either twisted into the curly hairs behind his ear or stabbed into whatever semblance of a bun he was wearing that day, which was  _ unfairly cute. _

Sora called him an old man for it constantly, between that and the thick glasses that only got thicker with the years staring at computers and into slides, but ultimately there was something  _ very _ sweet about it.

Riku had even sent him handwritten letters complete with little sketches when they had first started dating, and he still kept up the practice for anniversaries and holidays. It was relentlessly charming, in a quiet, out-of-time way—just like Riku.

Sora knew he was grinning as he turned the farthest computer on, catching his reflection in the glass as it booted. Five years and he still felt the same unruly butterflies. He figured he had to be just about as lucky as one guy could get.

“Morning, Oathie,” Sora whispered, clicking open the live video feed from the desktop. The undersea lab had two roaming robots leashed to it that scoured the sea floor all night, equipped with decent high res cameras and arms for sample collecting: O-A and O-B—Oathkeeper and Oblivion, Sora had quickly dubbed them, after his favorite children’s book series. 

So what if he got  _ attached _ ? The robots were just as important to the station as the scientists, as far as he was concerned. 

Besides, they were kinda cute, all weird, mechanical legs and little lobster claw-esque limbs that held surprising dexterity. Gifts from when Riku’s dad had pulled some strings at RGU.

Sora scrubbed through the Oathkeeper footage from overnight, sipping at lukewarm cocoa as he went. A few sightings of cephalopods, and Kairi would be happy about that—nothing terribly rare, but a bobtail squid or two, so he took a moment to scribble down relative locations for each according to the readouts. He paused the feed suddenly, squinting. A flash of bright pink had appeared for a second between the muted spires of coral on screen before quickly flashing away in a blur of disturbed sediment as it caught the current away.

“Was that…” He quickly flicked his eyes to the fuzzy printout taped to the window right above the computer. It was an unnamed nudibranch Riku had caught sight of briefly on a previous expedition two years back, and the unofficial target of this one; Riku had circled it several times in red ink and had written a bunch of things with angry question marks around it. They had never succeeded in finding it again, but Riku was like a man obsessed, just like his father: they just couldn’t leave mysteries alone once they’d tripped over one. 

Sora scrubbed back and forth on the video for the same few seconds, but it was impossible to make out more of it at the moment without enhancement, so he’d have to ask Riku for a second opinion later. The colors seemed to match, as did the antennae, but...

Suddenly, a bone-rattlingly loud ringing sound jettisoned him out of his thoughts and sent him scrambling to find where it was coming from. His mug nearly toppled in his frantic quest to slam the mute button so as to not rudely awake  _ everyone onboard _ and click the  _ accept call _ button with the mouse at the same time.

His screen crackled to life, the black-haired woman on the other side of the connection  _ very _ close to the camera as she adjusted things Sora wasn’t privy to.

“Xion!” Sora yelled in surprise, pressing close to his own screen.

She winced visibly, then fiddled with what he assumed was the volume. “Hey Sora,” she answered. “How’s the weather down there?”

“Nice,” he said, grinning. “Sea visibility is great today.” He caught himself leaning even closer, over his crossed legs, like that would help him see her. “How’s it going over there?”

“ _ Cold _ ,” she hissed out of the cocoon of blankets crowding most of the screen. She resembled a very small,  _ very _ stuffed human burrito with eyes crammed into a computer chair.

“Looks it,” Sora agreed, resting his chin on his hand. It had been been  _ too _ long since he’d seen Xion, since she’d moved off the islands to go to college years ago. Ironic that they all often worked together in some capacity but still lived so far apart. “What time is it there?”

“Three in the morning,” she sighed. She had her knees pulled up under her, barely on screen, with a steaming cup of maybe-tea perched between her hands. “Time difference.” She shrugged. 

Ouch. He had forgotten it was  _ that _ bad.

“Thanks for staying up with me,” Sora said gratefully. Normally she was involved with much larger tech things than this, at more normal hours, but Sora was a friend to all of them and Xion was too kind to turn down his requests to help with the stream.

“‘Course,” she said quietly. “Riku’s dad was always good to me, and this is important to all of us. I want to help if I can.”

“Means a lot,” Sora told her, and they lapsed into silence as Xion undoubtedly did something technical, tongue poking out the side of her mouth, and Sora’s wandering attention caught the wary, rolling eye of a grouper through the port window that sent him close to spilling his cocoa everywhere with a surprised “ _ woah _ !”. 

Undaunted, the fish took a long visual sweep of the room, pupil large and bulging and searching, before rumbling away.

“Everything okay?” Xion asked.

“Yeah, sorry,” Sora told her, his hands shaking as he set the drink down before he could drop it to grasp at his tank top. “Vanitas scared the shit out of me.”

” _ Vanitas _ ?” she repeated incredulously. 

Sora scrubbed at his hair sheepishly. “Yeah, I uh, kinda named this massive fish that hangs around the station after him because it’s _really_ human-aggressive normally but won’t stop harassing _me_ for attention or food when I go on dives.”

Xion snorted at that, her smile quirking up to something fond. “That sure sounds like him. And you.”

“I thought it fit,” Sora snickered. “Don’t tell my cousin.”

She didn’t answer, but her eyes flicked quickly to the side with a smile he didn’t know how to read, like someone else was in the room. Pity Sora couldn’t see beyond her blankets…

“Hey. Xion,” he began curiously. “Is someone else there—“

“ _ Okay _ ,” Xion cut him off, stealing his attention back. She slapped her hands on the table like a gavel. “I wanted to have a quick refresh about the rules before we get started.

“I’ve taken the liberty of putting up a helpful sign,” her hand tilted up and pointed at the red  **FAMILY FRIENDLY** image hovering at the top of the user interface,“so there won’t be any confusion.”

Sora squinted at the sign in indignation.

“ _ Family Friendly _ ?” Sora repeated in an offended tone, to which she nodded, raising her brows in challenge. “I’m  _ super _ family friendly! Riku’s family  _ loves _ me.”

It was true. Riku’s mom loved Sora possibly more than Riku, not to mention the entire side of the matriarchal line of the family, which was, in general, the only side whose opinion mattered. Every family gathering or festival had Sora swarmed by kindly, silver-haired older women and baby cousins, hanging off his shoulders and his hands and his words. 

“That’s… not the kind of family friendly I’m talking about.”

“Okay, so they did go a  _ little _ wild that one time I talked about nudibranch reproduction—“

“That’s,” she said flatly, her face just as unimpressed, “an understatement.”

And yes,  _ okay _ , it was true that the chat had been an absolute zoo of crudely thrown together memes for the next hour until they finally had to shut it down because there was simply no saving it. Once you got a bunch of probably-teenagers on that topic of reproduction there was no ensnaring them with riveting firsthand accounts of coral propagation. 

Really, the  _ priorities _ of the  _ youths _ .

“At least it seemed like they were having  _ fun _ for once,” Sora sighed. “And the numbers were decent.”

“Numbers aside,” Xion sighed. “Just promise me you’ll try. It’s no use if they demonetize us before we even have a chance.”

“Fine,” Sora groaned, like it was the hardest thing he’d ever done. Xion smiled brightly anyway.

“Other than that,” she said, tapping on her keyboard every so often, the clicking coming through the speakers. “We’re—Nami And I—going to mod the donation stream until around midnight, your time. Whatever we make in that amount of time we make, but absolutely anything you can do  _ within our bounds _ to get more eyes on it, try it. Viewers have been stabilizing for a few weeks now, But we’re still nowhere near where we need to be to… delay things.”

_ Things _ . Like the inevitable, creeping decommissioning of GUMMI for lack of interest and funds, stalking them all like a  _ very _ insistent, bumbling bull shark. Riku and he had been carefully talking  _ around _ it for weeks, but now they were almost out of time. It was only a week to the new year, and if they didn’t at least have proof of  _ something _ special by then, well...

“I have an idea,” Sora said slowly, his eyes on the printout. “But it might be a long shot,” he continued, drumming his fingers along the keys. “Like,  _ really _ long.”

“A long shot is better than no shot,” Xion said. “And hey, Sora. Best of luck out there. We’ll be here if you need us.”

“Thanks, Xion,” he said, summoning a smile for her benefit. “Signing off.”

Then, he was alone, and it felt less relaxing than it had at first. He longed to be back in bed, before the reality of the situation had settled like rocks in his stomach, clicking together when he moved.

“Well,” Sora said to himself, heaving a sigh. “ _ That _ was depressing.” The dregs of cocoa had solidified into something far less appetizing, and it seemed to match the inscrutable clouds hanging over the whole venture as he grimaced into it.

It was just  _ hard  _ to put on a brave face when it felt like Sora could feel  _ every square inch _ of pressure resting squarely on his shoulders. How could he save the station in a few hours, when they’d been trying for  _ years _ ?

If they failed,  _ well _ . That very well might be the end of that.

They just wouldn’t fail. That’s what he would choose to believe.

  


Sora was so busy spinning his chair in circles and talking to himself in equal circles (he remembered to buzz Riku when he smelled coffee brewing) that he nearly ended up late for the stream, according to the industrial, angry-looking red digital display clock welded to the wall.

Seven AM on the dot, even if it was too early for any sane person. They needed all the time they could scrounge up.

A quick onceover found him presentable—red tank top because Sora abhorred sleeves above all things with a faded RGU MARINE BIO logo, crown necklace, and—he ran a hand through his hair, grimacing—not much to do about that part, now. Showers in the station could only do so much for the saltwater exposure.

“Here goes nothing,” he murmured, and opened the stream window. He let it play the live video from Oblivion for a few minutes as he watched the viewer numbers tick up. Currently the robot was focused on a clump of bright red coral with a few parrotfish swiping in and out between the ridges, and Naminé had somehow overlaid a sketch of Sora giving a thumbs-up with a  _ “Science stream soon! _ ” message underneath as he readied the camera. A timer in the lower right-hand corner ticked down the thirty seconds he had to prepare.

_ Ten… five… zero. Deep breath, Sora. You can do this. _

“Good morning from the GUMMI ship!” Sora chirped, switching the front-facing camera on. “It’s,” he paused to glance at the clock again, “Tuesday, 0700 hours local time, and the sea temperature is a balmy seventy degrees according to Oathie. Everyone say good morning!”

The chat erupted instantly with  _ “Good morning, GUMMI ship!”  _ responses, and it warmed Sora's heart, no matter how many times it happened or how many streams he’d done. 

“How is everyone today?”

Sora stretched, languishing in the way all his vertebrae cracked back into place; he rolled his shoulders, then his neck, then leaned over the control panel to peer at the screen. It displayed his own face in a corner, as well as several scrolling pop-ups on their current research, location, and a series of ocean facts that rotated based on who had last bothered to write them into the account. Currently it was all cephalopod facts, so Kairi was a good guess. 

Xion’s little moderator chat window popped up in front of him, displaying a tiny dancing angelfish with a little bubble that said “Don’t worry, anyfin is possible!”, which Sora smiled at. It looked like more of Naminé’s handiwork. They would be responsible for filtering out the questions and comments that were especially not science-related and tracking donations.

In the upper right, the green zero under the donation tab sent a stab of nerves through him. Somehow this felt way more important than it usually did.

A few “ _ How are you?” _ messages stuttered past him, and he leaned back in the creaky chair, skimming the ones he could catch, trying to gather his nerve. He knew a lot of the people filtering in—stream regulars, who knew him maybe a  _ little _ too well because he always spoke too freely and viewers were pretty observant—and it set him more at ease than the idea of performing for strangers. 

“Haha, well, I’m a little stiff, but—that’s what happens when you have to sleep on tiny bunks. The nudis are worth it, though! If we weren’t here for them, who would be?”

He squinted at the chat again, scrolling past a series of people yelling “SEND NUDIS _ ” _ —as if he hadn’t heard  _ that _ one a thousand times—and a few people aquiseincing with photos of blue-frilled  _ Chromodoris loci  _ and close-ups of black-tipped  _ Joruna pParva _ to find something to start his question and answer segment. A time killer until Riku and Kairi shambled in.

“Do you guys know why they’re called nudibranchs?” With a sly look to the  _ family friendly  _ sign ( _ Xion is typing  _ appeared in the upper right corner of his screen, as if in challenge), Sora barreled on. “It means ‘naked gills’. The cute little frilly butt-parts are actually how the little guys breathe. Isn’t that  _ cool _ ?”

Riku would hate him referring to the parts by anything but  _ branchial plumes _ , but Sora figured what Riku didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him.

The dulcet tones of Xion yelling at him were worth it, as he noted with  _ some _ satisfaction that the viewer and donation count both ticked up, heralded by a  _ very _ fun whale-song sound effect every time one was made. He had to thank Xion for that one, probably.

“Looks like we have a few minutes until everyone else wakes up, so I’m going to tell you why today’s stream is special. If you’re new, you might not know this, but… The GUMMI ship—that’s where I am right now, it stands for something like  _ Grounded Underwater Marine Multi-Integration Station _ … is being threatened with defunding. Me and Riku and Kairi grew up on the island where we’re based, and with the Radiant Garden reef here, we believe that it shouldn’t be closed, no matter  _ what _ . For the next several hours we’re gonna show you why, and if you like what we do, you can shoot us a donation in the corner there!”

_ Cuddlefish ( _ Sora smiled at the username) sent a message that read, “ _ What happens to the station in that case?” _ “Well…” Sora hummed, “Not to get  _ too _ depressing this early, but it’s likely it would just stop being used or maintenanced until it rusts out, or someone with funds decides to rescue it.”

Various crying dumbo octopus emojis made a wall in the chat, and Sora had to laugh at the magnitude of the response. “I know, I know. Don’t worry too much, though! I believe we can do it together!”

Maybe if he said it enough, he would feel it. Dwelling on it wouldn’t help anyone, and wouldn’t help them connect to people, so… Sora found some resolve.

“Okay, now that the sad business is outta the way, how about you hit me with your burning questions!”

He chewed on a pen while he scanned, eyes glazing over a bit with the frequency of the messages—pointedly skipping several more  _ intimate _ ones about him and Riku, as always. 

“Where’s Riku? He’s sleeping in for a few extra minutes. He was up all night in the reef nursery staring at coral slides, so everyone type  _ really quietly _ for a while, okay?” He winked at the camera lens for effect, prompting a deluge of heart and kissing fish emojis from the chat, so he had to fight not to roll his eyes. 

“Do we have any burning  _ science _ questions this morning? Afternoon? Time has lost all meaning because we’ve been down here for almost ten days now?” He spun in a slow circle in his chair, letting them trickle in. For a hundred viewers or so, they were  _ talkative _ . 

He picked out a question that wasn’t “ _ How long have you and Riku been dating _ ? _ ” _ or “ _ Was your ring bearer a nudibranch? _ ” at random. 

“ _ Umami_ _ asks: ‘Can  _ anyone _ live underwater?’” Sora leaned back in his chair, pencil now balanced beneath his nose. “I mean, yeah! It’s just a process to acclimate to the pressure, and then you’re golden. It’s just getting back up again that takes a while, since you have to kinda lie really still and do nothing for hours.”

Someone named  _ fishforgayrights27  _ caught his eye—the name made him snort—with their icon, which was an image of fish at a pride parade.

“Can you…” It took him a second to decipher the typos. “Can you  _ pet _ a nudibranch?” He hummed thoughtfully. “You  _ could _ , but the toxins some of them produce can harm humans, and also it’s not great to pet wildlife—it would stress the little dudes out! Remember: if you love it, admire it from afar.”

A sly smile worked its way across his face, and part of him told him  _ not _ to, but the other part was watching the donation counter tick past a hundred.

“Hey, it worked for me,” he said, with the sappiest smile he could muster, not entirely accidental.

“Are you talking about me in fish metaphors again, Sora?” came Riku’s voice, as if on cue, from the hallway.

Sora fell back lazily in his chair to lean and grin in his direction upside-down, the pencil flying across the floor. “What gave it away?”

The loud _roooooaaaaaaa_ of the whale song effect increased until it was one long, terrifying overlay of sound, the chat scrolling faster and faster until Sora finally muted the thing in panic, turning the video feed back to peaceful clownfish and coral for privacy. By the end, he was almost panting, wide-eyed.

“Look what you’ve done,” Kairi said flatly, shouldering past Riku, who was still blinking tiredly in the hallway with his hair half-falling out of a messy bun, to seat herself in the chair to Sora’s right. Blessedly, she had two steaming mugs in her hands. “There’s no getting them back to fish now.”

Kairi was the only one of their ragtag trio that looked remotely awake—even dressed in her diving shorts and a top with a prominent strip of fluorescent pink down the back for visibility.

“How long was that?” Riku asked, shuffling into the room with his best impression of a hobbling old man.

“Ten minutes,” Kairi quipped over her coffee.

“A new record,” Riku whistled.

Sora rubbed his neck sheepishly and grinned. “I  _ know _ , but it’s just—they’re so  _ happy _ , Kairi! I can’t help it sometimes. It’s kinda  _ cute _ .”

“ _ Okay _ , just don’t come crying to me when another  _ Sappy Sora  _ compilation goes up tomorrow,” she sighed. She sized up the state of Riku, rubbing fruitlessly at his eyes with his glasses askew, blue plaid PJ pants and navy slippers, to top  _ that _ off—then pointed at the desk in front of her. “Riku. Your coffee.”

“I would  _ die _ for you,” he told her reverently, stepping forward to accept the drink. Then, he took the seat to Sora’s left. Sitting in such a  _ small _ chair meant that Riku had to fold himself into the space like a rather complicated feat of origami while Kairi and Sora fit just fine, his knees knocking the table until he settled with sitting farther away. Sora fought the urge to snicker at the mental image, saving it into his “ _ Riku Fitting Into Small Spaces _ ” banks for later.

“I know,” Kairi told him sweetly, and patted his hand. “But I don’t want that on my conscience,” she said, before cutting her eyes slyly to the side. “Besides, that would make  _ Sora _ here a widow.”

Riku abruptly choked on his coffee, sputtering, until Sora slammed a fist so hard into his back he pitched forward into the controls before he caught himself on his hand.

The violent motion had sent Riku’s glasses askew on his face, so Sora reached out automatically to fix them with a bright smile, which Riku returned with a small one of his own.

“We’re not  _ married _ , Kai,” Sora said, rolling his eyes. His hand smoothed absently over the panes of Riku’s back through his shirt in apology. 

It wasn’t like Sora hadn’t  _ thought _ about it—it was just that Riku was so  _ old fashioned _ , in some ways—Sora jokingly called dating him a courtship, because it was slow and beautiful and like unwrapping something precious, one layer at a time. Getting to know Riku was a gift he didn’t give to everyone, and Sora was probably half in love with him before he’d even asked him out. He had figured Riku had planned to take it to his grave if he hadn’t forced the issue, so Sora had kinda figured he and Riku would just… never get married. It wasn’t like they weren’t committed in every way that mattered, anyhow—they had a house together with a ridiculous wooden paopu wreath on the door and everything, they worked together, published papers together, had even adopted a slightly mangy dog that looked more like a cat… that looked like a dog… together. 

Sora wasn’t patient in anything else, but he  _ could _ be, for Riku—or more like Riku helped him to be patient, to slow down, to sink his frustration into something more languid and calm, until it tapered and went out like a dying ember.

In return, he tempered some of Riku’s withdrawal, coaxed him out of his shell, and helped give him a home to feel secure enough to branch out.

They were better together. And, really, that was  _ enough _ .

“Not  _ yet _ , anyway,“ Kairi said, launching Sora rudely back to reality with a pointed look at Riku, who was going red from the lingering coughing fit.

Riku looked  _ pointedly _ back with a slight decline of his chin and a set in his jaw. His eyes, prismatic green and unreadable, seemed to be saying something Sora didn’t understand.

Like an extended ping-pong match before his eyes, Kairi raised a single, thin eyebrow. 

Something telepathic was afoot, Sora knew. He didn’t like it at all.

“I don’t see how  _ that’s _ relevant to the stream,” Riku muttered finally, with a light dusting of pink across his nose _. _

“It’s not,” she said sweetly, stirring her coffee. “Speaking of! I can take the stream out on a field trip on the reef today since I’m planning to do a survey dive. Committee wants to see how the baby corals from the research initiative are doing, and I want to check on some octopi. Something different to get them off your love life, you know.” She sent Sora a wink over Riku’s shoulder.

“I don’t know if  _ they’re _ the ones that need to get off our love lives—“ Riku was starting, so Sora got between them.

“It  _ would _ be nice to talk about actual science for once… Ah, Riku, you can help, since you’re here!” It was a rare situation that had them all together in the same room, doing the same stream. His eyes lit up as he grabbed Riku’s hands. “The stream  _ loves _ you, they think you’re  _ so _ mysterious because you refuse to show your face to the camera.”

Riku made a face. “That’s… I just don’t want internet strangers staring at me, is all. Feels like being in a zoo.”

“You just have to narrate over Kairi’s live footage! No video involved. It’ll be easy. You  _ love _ to talk about coral propagation, don’t even pretend you don’t.” 

“I guess… I could talk about the reef...” Riku scratched at his cheek in thought, tilted back in his chair to consider the ceiling.

Sora was nodding enthusiastically. “A captive audience of—” He checked the numbers—okay, so he would exaggerate it a bit, ”—five hundred, Riku. Think of how many  _ hearts _ that is.”

“Think of how much  _ funding  _ that is,” Kairi muttered, ever the practical one. (Which was probably why she actually had the  _ lucrative _ research.)

“Using my speech against me feels low, Sora.” Riku took one look at his earnest face, eyes wide and shining, and groaned in imminent defeat. “But—If you think it’ll help—“

“It’s decided,” Kairi said, standing. “Switch the feed to my helmet cam once I’m clear of the wet deck, and let’s give ‘em a show.” She winked at them and flashed a thumbs-up.

“Oh shoot!” Sora exclaimed, nearly out of his chair already. “Hold on. I forgot. Kairi, Riku—I saw something on Oathie this morning—check it out.” He had isolated the frames into a series of five photos, and he brought them up as they crowded close around his shoulders to see the computer screen.

An audible gasp came from his right as Riku removed his glasses to see better. “Is that—“

“Yeah, the mystery nudi, I think. Kairi, if you see anything even close to it on the reef, let us know right away. If we could find it  _ today… _ ”

“Could be just the boost we really need for the donations,” she murmured. “What direction was it traveling?”

“Southwest,” Riku answered, already crossing the room to the boards on the other side. “Reef map, reef map… Ah, got it.” He pulled a yellowing map from the wall that had clearly seen better days—it was curled and shredded at the edges, and the topographical print was faded and drawn over repeatedly in graphite in a makeshift attempt to preserve the earlier lines. It was something his father had started before the base had even  _ existed _ , and when Riku was old enough to not be persuaded to stay on shore any longer as his father led research dives, it was something they did  _ together _ . 

It bore the marks of being erased and drawn over as they got better mapping tech, and it also bore little red ink marks from where they had spotted things of interest in the past. Even though the whole thing had been converted to digital ages ago, Riku still kept the old map. 

He uncapped a pen with his teeth and leaned closer to it, gesturing at Kairi and Sora to join him. “Currently, Oathkeeper is about here—“ He marked a spot on the left side of the map, “Oblivion is about here,” he said, and did the same to the right. “I would say if it’s a coral-based species, and slow-moving, between Kairi and the cameras we should be able to trap it inside a triangle if we’re lucky. Unless it’s under cover or otherwise not obvious.”

Kairi hummed. “Got it. I can make my way over there during the survey.”

“Exactly,” Riku said. “Kairi, I’ll signal you when the stream is ready to switch over. Sora will be monitoring your dive so I can keep an eye on the cameras and the stream. I don’t want us to miss it if it shows up.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll play backup if you get too flustered,” Sora said, smirking.

Riku playfully butted his shoulder. “Yeah, okay.”

Kairi rolled her eyes. “Don’t flirt the whole time I’m gone, boys. We leave tomorrow, so it’s now or never. “

“I’m not—“

“You were,” Sora and Kairi said together.

“Love it when you two tag team me,” Riku muttered, turning away from them to fix his glasses, which had slipped down his nose.

“I know you do,” Kairi said brightly, patting his shoulder, but her face went soft and sad. “Not to be the downer, but… you know, we might not get another chance,” Kairi said softly as she ducked under the low ceiling to the hallway. “We gotta do everything we can to make this one count.” 

Sora had to place a hand on Riku’s shoulder as he stared through the hallway door after her for a few moments too long. “It’ll be alright,” Sora murmured. “We can do this.”

Riku offered him a strained smile in response, so Sora squeezed his hand instead.

“Testing one, two. Can you hear me?” Sora spoke into the mic connected to Kairi’s scuba mask. He could see her through the cameras (set in every room of the station) both legs (and fins) dangling over the edge of the water of the moon pool of the wet deck. There was only one entry and exit point for the station, and it was a simple, rectangular hole in the floor, waves lapping at its edges, like their own personal underwater in-ground pool. Only the air pressure in the cabin kept it where it was.

Kairi perched over it in a head-to-toe wetsuit complete with a heavy vest and air tank strapped to her back, her regulator in place as she twisted knobs to test the equipment.

Sora put on his best  _ commanding _ voice. “Come in, Red One. Gummiship to aquanaut, over. Do you copy?”

She took a second to look up at the loudspeaker in amusement, shaking her head, before securing a dive compass to her arm.

“I copy, squad leader,” Kairi responded. “Atmosphere is stable, though no sign of intelligent life anywhere, over.”

Sora was already grinning, remembering the best part of working with his  _ best friends,  _ even as Riku put on a show of rolling his eyes.

“Riku is rolling his eyes, over. He says we’re using over wrong, over.”

“I did not—“ Riku defended himself, but Sora moved his hand back, challenging him for the mic. They squabbled over it like stupid teenagers for a second, Sora playing dirty by hiding it behind his back. 

“Tell Riku he’s being a wet blanket, over,” Kairi quipped, bending to secure her fins (bright pink, like the rest of her). “I’ll use over as I please, over.”

“Not to interrupt, but I need an equipment check, Kairi,” Riku cut in on his own channel, raising his eyebrows challengingly at Sora, a new mic grasped in his hand. 

_ Cheater _ , Sora mouthed.

“All in order, Blue Captain,” Kairi said, checking herself over. “We are a-go.”

“Okay,” Riku said. “You’re cleared for take off, cadet.” He quirked a smile, and caught Sora’s eye. “Over.”

Kairi sent him a salute and a grin, then closed the mask over her face before lowering slowly into the pool. First the fluorescent yellow of her air tank, then her vest, and her head was the last to disappear, a fan of red hair against the surface as she let her mask pressurize, before she ducked under and vanished from view.

Riku flicked a series of switches until the feed from Kairi’s helmet camera filled their computer screens, and Sora felt the way his heart tripped over itself even before he pressed himself as close to the screen as he could, nearly molded to Riku’s shoulder, both arms twined around his arm. Riku shifted to account for the extra weight, and Sora rested his head on him.

Kairi took a long spiral swim around the bulk of the base for the benefit of the cameras, and the outside of GUMMI rose from the sea floor like some fortified castle, strong, thick crimson pylons of steel bolted to a metal plate on the sea floor, with rainbow shades of coral and anemones, and barnacles that had accumulated over the slow progression of years. Each new layer was like the stalwart, steady lines of a tree trunk, and the slow creeping acid orange rust under all of it that would reclaim it eventually if they couldn’t save it from decommissioning. It kinda  _ did _ look like a proper spaceship from certain angles, if one had crashed to the bottom of the sea.

Below that, the reef spread out before them on the large screen, bubbles floating up every so often, courtesy of Kairi; it was a tapestry of bright colors: mustard yellows and bright red peaks of cauliflower corals intermixed with vibrant lionfish and schools of rainbow-and-silver triggerfish, complete with the freshly risen sun splashed across across the sandy depths of the sea floor in wide rivers of light.

It’s so  _ pretty _ ,” Sora sighed. “I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this view.”

“I know what you mean,” Riku replied, tone equally soft. He tilted his head subtly into Sora’s, both of them rapt.

Riku had grown up on the reef, Sora knew—it was as close to home as he had. The ocean enfolded him in its arms even when he was an angry teenager and didn’t know  _ why _ , before he knew words like  _ anxiety _ and that his parents were going to split up. He’d been snorkeling since he could hold his breath, and diving not long after that. The ocean was his first love, and he loved it still.

Sora couldn’t be jealous, because he felt the exact same way—Sora’s mother had always said the  _ itch _ his fisherman father had was in his bones, in his blood. Something restless that lived beneath his skin, something that was only at peace when he was out  _ here.  _

The lucky thing is that he had found someone who felt the same.

Riku slipped the headset on, switching the camera to Kairi’s head mount. “Good morning,” he said, a little shy. His eyes found Sora’s, who flashed him an encouraging thumbs-up. “Riku here. Sora will be taking a break to make sure Kairi has everything she needs for her dive. I’ll be talking to you about the things Kairi is seeing out on the reef today.”

The stream erupted in “ _ Riku! _ ” and various forms of heart-eye basking shark emojis, and Sora fought the urge to laugh at Riku’s surprised expression as the whale song sound sounded again, signaling more donations.

_ See _ ? Sora mouthed smugly, wiggling his eyebrows. Riku had to physically turn Sora’s face away so he wouldn’t laugh at his expression.

Kairi was making her first descent into the coral valley by the ocean floor, scattering a school of parrotfish in every direction; they heard her laugh through her mic. 

“How does that  _ never _ get old?” she said, a little softly, and it tickled Sora’s own headset. 

“Magic,” Sora said, grinning. “Or maybe we’re all hopeless nerds.”

“Both of those could be true,” Kairi responded. They saw her descend until she was nearly touching the coral, trailing her gloves just above red-tipped peaks. 

“What Kairi is looking at is a baby coral from the RGRC,” Riku was murmuring to the stream. It was his  _ teaching _ voice, developed from teaching college classes to marine bio students in the past few years. As patient as Sora could be, Riku was built for it in a way Sora wasn't, endlessly patient and willing to explain, no matter what he thought. “It might look pretty big, but it’s a baby by coral standards. It was transferred here two years ago as part of the Radiant Garden restoration program...”

A few hours passed that way, Sora nearly nodding off to the sound of Riku’s voice at points between glances at Kairi’s video feed and readouts of her air levels, which were  _ more _ than fine, so it was mostly a formality. She would tell him if anything was wrong with more than fair warning, and...

_ And _ ...

The next thing he knew, Riku was jostling his shoulder. 

“Hmm? Whassat? I’m awake, I… I  _ swear _ .” Riku’s shirt was damp with drool, and Sora tried to rub at it with his cheek before Riku noticed. Of course, he did, because he saw everything, and all Sora had to show for it was a wet cheek and a grimace and a numb face where the headset had dug into his cheek.

“Nice,” Riku said drily, looking forlornly downwards. “ _ Another  _ perfectly good shirt lost to Sora drool.”

“Don’t be dramatic, you have like, four of these.” Sora yawned, stretching. “Sorry. Didn’t even notice I fell asleep. How long was I out?

“It’s fine. Not like it’s the first time you fell asleep in one of my lectures,” Riku teased, and Sora opened his mouth to argue before Riku clapped a hand over it. “We’re still streaming. I just thought you’d want to see this.”

Sora glanced over to the screen, tangling Riku’s hand with his own absentmindedly as he tugged it away from his mouth.

On screen, Kairi had traced the route from the station to Oathkeeper, its white hulking mass painted with O-A barely visible behind a rock formation that placed her at the edge of the robot’s territory. Oblivion, black and angular, rose in the far distance. It was nearing afternoon, so the sun was dying everything brilliant, saturated aqua.

“I’m approaching the cliff zone,” Kairi spoke lowly into the mic. “Keep your eyes peeled.”

“Roger that, Eagle One,” Sora said, leaning into the mic.

“Is  _ that _ my name now? I can’t keep track.”

“Neither can I,” Sora admitted, laughing. “Just go with it.”

The chat chimed in to agree, some with suggestions for  _ better _ names that Sora stalwartly ignored. If he  _ wanted _ one, he would’ve  _ asked _ .

It was as she was executing a slow spin that took her  _ just _ over the edge of a tall peak that Sora spotted it. Just for a  _ second _ , just a flash of pink that could have been  _ anything—he _ had only seen it because it was nestled in the black ridges of a peculiar coral that his well-trained identification eyes hadn’t recognized.

He nearly slammed right into the screen in his haste to turn his volume up to max. “Kairi!” he yelled. “Kairi, turn around! Quick!”

The camera went jerky as she hurriedly complied, but in the wrong direction. “Sora! What’s going on? Did you see it?”

“Yeah, I think—I mean, no—turn the other way, I just saw it to the right side—“

“Here?” she questioned, but no, the angle was  _ still _ wrong, and Sora desperately wished he was out there to take her head and  _ point it. _

Riku was hurriedly uncapping a pen and marking down her precise location on his map, and thank goodness for that, because it took Kairi three minutes to assume her previous position, and by then, the thing was gone, the black coral sadly empty of any inhabitants, and Sora had neatly snapped his pencil in half in frustration.

“ _ Fuck _ ,” Sora cursed lowly, and Xion started typing instantly. “I mean. F… Fiddlesticks… fish… sticks.” He preemptively shut his headset off just in time to unleash a stream of  _ real _ curses. If  _ only _ he’d gone out too...

“ _Sora’s in troubleeeee!_ ” crowed someone named _nudibot_ in the chat, and someone else responded with “ _can I get fiddlesticks in chat?_ ” Several other people joined in, until it was a mess of _fiddlesticks_ and _f_ and _pictures of fishsticks_ and confused people asking if anyone was hurt and what they missed.

He had to say  _ something _ , if only to reign it in… but Riku beat him to it.

“Sorry, everyone. Just thought we saw something. Don’t worry about it, Kairi is fine,” Riku said calmly, in his best Don’t Panic voice.

“I am!” she cut in. “Just doing some fancy diving maneuvers. Thanks for asking.”

Riku cut his eyes over worriedly, but Sora shook his head. If Riku touched him right now he’d probably do something stupid like  _ frustrated cry  _ on stream, and nobody needed to hear or see that.

Kairi moved past apologies and into damage control faster than Sora could, and within minutes the stream was distracted by her descending into a patch of reef as tall as she was. It hid a nest she had discovered on a dive a few days prior, and she let a baby big blue Octopus she had found the day before wrap its tiny tentacles around her finger curiously, and the viewer numbers began ticking up again. 

“The chromatophores in its body let it change color,” Kairi was saying, in low, soothing tones. “Here, watch what happens if I put this shell next to it…”

The whale song sound filled the cabin again.

It almost soothed the burn of the loss. 

_ Almost _ .

Kairi returned two hours later, fuming and dejected and still dripping seawater from her hair despite her change of clothes, and Riku pushed a bowl of soup into her hands before she could even sit down.

“I can’t believe I lost it,” she groaned, throwing herself into the makeshift kitchen chair. It was really an all-purpose rolling chair that squeaked sadly across the floor with her momentum, but still.

“Eat,” Riku commanded, retrieving his own bowl the microwave. Food was rarely very fancy underwater. “You were out there way too long looking.” Then, a matching bowl of tomato soup was shoved into Sora’s hands. “You too, Sora.”

She smiled tiredly. “Usually I’m the one playing mom. I could get used to this.”

“Somebody has to handle things while you’re all busy  _ moping _ ,” Riku said, passing them spoons. “You’re all sitting around feeling sorry for yourselves when we could be fielding ideas.”

“I swear I saw it,” Sora moaned, staring into his soup dejectedly. Riku nudged him with his shoulder until he stopped staring and ate a spoonful.

“We believe you,” Kairi agreed. “I’m just mad at myself for losing it again.”

“Forget that,” Riku said, waving his spoon around. “Put that aside for a second and focus on the objective,” he insisted, an echo of what his father had been so fond of saying. “What do we  _ know  _ about it?”

He spread the reef map on the table in front of them on the kitchen counter, the ends held down with silverware, and he had already marked the location of the new sighting. With one more, they would have a more accurate triangle to work with.

“Well…” Sora said slowly. He really did feel better with soup warming his stomach. Riku was right. “Before today, Riku was the last person to see it, right? Wasn’t that near the fall off?

There was a canyon about a mile from the station, and beyond that the sea floor fell away in a gentle downward slope. They’d never actually gone down there for lack of time or reason, but...

“Right. I was here on the border when I sighted it, and lucky Oblivion caught it, but by the time I’d turned away it was gone. Basically what happened to Kairi, but in an entirely different spot.”

“Two years ago,” Sora repeated, tapping his spoon against the bowl. “No sightings since, before today. So it spends a lot of time hidden, the population is small, or else it has to be…”

“Camouflaged?” Kairi asked the air. “Is that possible, Riku?

“It’s… Yeah, it’s an idea.” Riku paced in circles across the floor, arms crossed. “It’s been documented, yeah. Only a few times in nudibranch, but still.”

Sora was staring pensively out the window, following the placid lines of drifting plankton. Something was bothering him—a gut feeling, maybe—and Kairi and Riku’s discussion faded into the background as he considered it.

Two  _ years _ ago…  _ Two _ years ago… Something had happened, then, but he couldn’t…

Sora slammed the table, rattling all of their bowls. Kairi paused in mid-bite as her soup was flung out of its confines. “The volcano!” 

Riku, who was well-used to Sora’s sudden outbursts, merely raised an eyebrow expectantly, waiting. 

Sora almost fumbled in a grab for a pen and the map, which Riku guessed and passed to him. “Two years ago… I was trying to remember what would have  _ changed _ suddenly—why Riku’s dad wouldn’t have seen the nudi before, you know, since he mapped pretty much  _ every _ landmark and species for  _ miles _ around? hat’s it. The last eruption we had was right around then, and it was here,” he said, marking a place on the Destiny Islands, close to the southern shore. “The eruption was slow, and it hit the sea here,” Sora continued, drawing a squiggly line into the ocean. “So when Riku was here—“ He put down a marker where the lines intersected.

“You think the species was displaced by the magma,” Riku finished for him, hair whipping behind him as he turned to the map again. “That’s…” He paused, arms crossed, to stare at the ceiling. “That  _ would _ explain why it seems to keep appearing in different spot.”

“Right place at the right time…” Kairi said, rolling the few feet to her laptop, open already on the counter. “According to recent surveys, the lava formed new tubes around the falloff… What if the coral species only began growing after that?”

“ _ Exactly _ ,” Sora said firmly. “I just have a feeling. Kairi, Riku. Let me go out and look.”

Something was taking hold in his gut, the fire familiar and curling and warm that made him down the rest of the soup, the sadness falling away from him like so many scales. 

_ Belief _ .

“If I send you down there on a hunch and you get hurt, I’ll never forgive myself. You know that as well as I do,” Riku said, spreading his hands. “I’m responsible for everyone here right now, and…”

“I know, but  _ just—feeling _ it right out there and not knowing where it is… Riku, I have to go.”

“We can’t go anywhere without a heading,” Riku sighed, and Sora was hit by a streak of annoyance at his  _ practicality _ . “Without that it’s a waste of manpower, and it’s  _ already _ dangerous to track that close to the ledge.”

“Would you let me go,” Sora said quietly, “if I could get another sighting?”

They stared at each other, Kairi and Riku, exchanging another entire conversation with their eyes, but Riku broke first, glancing over at Sora.

“I’ll go even if you tell me not to,” Sora reminded them. “You can’t hand me this and expect me not to do  _ something _ before we get kicked out of here forever. I just figure it’s better to let you know just in case.”

“ _ Sora _ ,” Riku sighed, but it was an old, old argument that Sora dared him with his eyes to reignite.

“ _ Okay _ . We can set the robots along the ledge, right near the tubes,” Riku relented finally. “If by some miracle we see it again, or the coral it seems to like, where we expect to… Well, three times is a pattern. I don’t  _ like _ it, but I want to find it as much as you do.”

“Right, but how do you expect to keep the robots on course, spot the nudibranch, keep up with the stream, and possibly do  _ and _ supervise an insanely dangerous dive at the same time?” Kairi inquired around her screen.

“I’m glad you asked,” Sora said, already smiling. “ _ I’m _ gonna ask the stream to help.”

“How, Sora?” Riku asked him, brows furrowed.

“Trust me,” he said, and rose to lead them back to the observation deck, his spoon clinking his empty bowl. “ _ I _ have an idea.”

“Okay, listen up, guys. If any of you spot the species I’m about to put up on my screen, please scream in the chat, or boost someone else who spots it. This is what we saw somewhere in the area today, but we can’t seem to find it again, so we could really use as many eyes as possible,” Sora explained. 

Someone named  _ youmaycallmemrfish  _ asked “ _ what’s the reward? _ ”

“Wh… What’s in it for you?” Sora read, perplexed. “Besides the sheer  _ joy _ of helping science and protecting the reef?” Sora actually hadn’t… thought about it.

“You can name it,” Riku said into the mic, dragging it over to himself. “Anything you want.”

“ _ Exactly _ !” Sora slammed the table in his excitement. “First one who spots and lets us know where gets to name the new species we discover if we find it. That’s your deal.”

The chat flooded in excitement and an immediate influx of crude, rude, and otherwise inappropriate names, but all Sora saw was the numbers ticking up, and he was  _ delighted _ .

Kairi leaned back and contemplated the ceiling. “You know what? This just might work.”

“You’re a genius, Riku,” Sora exclaimed, slapping him gamely on the back, and Riku scratched at his cheek with embarrassment. 

“I just know how to motivate people from teaching. It was your idea, really.”

“But I’m the one that connects with people, huh? I think you do fine on your own,  _ Mr. Dark and Mysterious _ .”

“If you say so,” Riku said, blushing for the fourth time that day.

“You’re  _ both _ great at it,” Kairi cut in, pulling them both close in a very awkward headlock. “Even if you’re losers.”

“Hey, speak for yourself!” Riku said, wiggling in her grip.

“Kairi! Get—off!” Sora groaned, but her hold was unyielding, the mark of lifting heavy tanks of sea life.

“ _Sounds like a murder is being committed,_ ” chimed in fishforgayrights27 _._ Sora had to laugh, because it wasn’t far from the truth. Xion removed the message a second later, which was a pity, really.

“Here’s the photo of the nudi,” Kairi said brightly, leaning over the mic, and a blown-up picture of it appeared on screen. “And  _ Sora _ here will tell you what we know about it.”

Mercifully, she released them, both of them rubbing at their necks pitifully until she disappeared into the hall again to shower.

Sora caught Riku’s eye once, in the middle of a spirited explanation about the mysterious black coral the mystery nudi could feed on (someone had already photoshopped him into a meme, hands spread, that just said  _ corals _ ) and tripped right over his words. Riku’s expression was so nakedly  _ fond,  _ his chin set on a hand and bangs falling in his eyes _ ,  _ like he would be happy to hear Sora talk about this for several hours more. How  _ nerdy. _

Like they hadn’t been together for five years; like Sora didn’t still get flustered just by a  _ look _ .

It was unfair sometimes, how lucky he was to have someone like Riku.

_ Love you _ , he mouthed, leaning away from the mic to do it.

_ Focus _ , Riku mouthed back, with one eyebrow quirked, like he wasn’t one  _ whole _ distraction by himself.

_ You first _ , he mouthed back, then returned to the stream.

_ Maybe… maybe there was a chance. _

It turned out that giving several thousand people the ability to cry wolf was  _ not _ one of his most thought-out schemes. After the sixth straight false alarm (a clownfish had startled something fuschia out of an anemone and across Oathkeeper’s slowly trawling video, and the chat became one long scream until Sora waved it off and calmed everyone again) Sora started to wish for something stronger than cocoa. 

His nerves were shot.

It didn’t help that as the sun fell, general visibility did too, as did the mood.

After the initial excitement, the comments slowed to a crawl as the late afternoon bled into night and no sign of the nudibranch appeared, and people left to attend to their own lives. Sora wished he couldn’t feel his heart dropping with every  _ ding _ to signal someone leaving. Riku wasn’t fairing much better, by the looks of things: his knee kept shaking beneath the table, and he’d taken to obsessively scanning their maps, making frustrated noises when they wouldn’t produce his answers.

Sora wanted to comfort him, to tell him it’d be alright, but it was getting harder for him to say the words. He wasn’t saying it, but Sora could read worry on the line of his shoulders and the clench of his jaw and fists. 

The three of them had taken to playing cards for a while, just for something to do. They burned through hearts, rummy, and twenty-one for good measure, and they all became steadily more listless as time trawled on.

“I’m gonna turn in,” Kairi said, stretching, leaving her cards behind, a few hours into their new vigil. It had been nice of her to stay with them when she could have been working. “Start the decomp process. I... hate to say it, but we can’t really wait much longer. Neither of you is dying of decomp sickness on my watch.”

“I  _ know _ ,” Sora nearly snapped, then caught himself. “Sorry… Just a little longer, I promise. I can’t give it up yet.”

By his side, Riku sighed, crossing his arms. “I agree with Sora on this one. We won’t push it too far, don’t worry.”

“Okay,” Kairi said, smiling at the both of them. “Don’t stay up too late.” Was it his imagination, or was she looking  _ extra _ hard at Riku? “And good  _ luck _ .”

“What was that about?” Sora asked, watching her retreat.

“No idea,” Riku intoned smoothly, but he wouldn’t meet his eyes. He might as well start whistling a silly tune for all the smoothness it had. Sora narrowed his eyes.

_ Weird. _

It was easier said than done, keeping their depressing watch alone. Oathkeeper and Oblivion met the end of their routes, so Sora listlessly set them on the reverse angle, listening to the quiet  _ whirr _ as their motors turned them around. Sleep deprivation was beginning to set in, and Sora carefully ignored a low pounding that was beginning behind his eyes, pressing his fingers into the spots like willing it away. Even the chat wasn’t a great distraction, and Sora had finally run out of encouraging words to say, Riku at his side like a silent sentinel.

Surprisingly, it was Riku who broke their nervous silence.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Sora. You moping again?”

“No  _ way _ ,” he denied fiercely, even though he’d been caught completely. “Why? Are you?”

Sora’s reward was a crooked, self-depreciating smile. “Maybe,” Riku admitted, and Sora wanted to push the words back into his mouth, because if Riku admitted it, he would too.

“Okay. Maybe a little,” Sora said finally. “I’m just…  _ really _ gonna miss it here, you know?”

“Me too,” Riku replied, hands nervously smoothing the edges of the map across his lap, and then the outside seam of his pants, up to his pocket and back. 

Sora, who had given up sitting still after the third false sighting, folded his hands behind his head and executed a slow spin across the floor, taking it in. “I mean… We have so many memories tied up in here.” He elbowed Riku. “We had our first kiss right over there, remember?” Sora pointed to the alcove near the door.

“How could I forget,” Riku chuckled, rubbing at his skull. “I’m pretty sure I still have the scar.” 

Sora had pulled him down with such  _ enthusiasm—he’d _ later admit it was nerves—he’d knocked both of them into the low ceiling, and then Riku had nearly concussed himself on the too-low door frame trying to compensate, and then Sora was pressing ice to Riku’s new skull accessory for the rest of the night as they watched badly narrated ocean documentaries from 1982 on an ancient TV with only a VHS player in a shared bunk and turned red from the force of holding in helpless laughter.

The only videos they could find had been about dolphins—no doubt a product of the last time Roxas had been granted access to the station, though that didn’t account for the age.

“ _ Fuck dolphins _ ,” Sora had muttered, his arms slung around one knee in the bunk next to Riku. They were already cramming themselves in, even then. He removed one arm to gesture wildly at the screen, his other hand still in Riku’s. “I mean,  _ I get it _ , they’re cute, but—”

“ _ Fuck dolphins _ ,” Riku had repeated reverently, with the certainty of a man who had discovered a possible head injury and his soulmate in the same night. His reward was a smile from Sora so bright he had to lie down, pretending at dizziness to mask the real reason.

They had repeated the first kiss attempt, but  _ successfully _ , the next morning, with the droning voice of a documentary narrator still in the background.

“You could say your dad set us up,” Sora grinned cheekily, waggling his eyebrows.

“He… I know I say it all the time, but… he really would have loved you.” Riku said quietly, his eyes so soft in the dimly lit cabin it took Sora’s breath away. 

“The whole island loved him, so I kinda feel like I knew him anyway,” Sora said quietly, crossing the floor to slip his hand into Riku’s, who was still sitting. This was the only way Sora was ever be taller than his massive boyfriend, and he cherished it. They were both a little cold, so Sora pressed closer into his side, relishing in the warmth of his calloused palm. “‘Sides. I owe him one, since it’s thanks to him I got to meet  _ you _ .”

“Sap,” Riku said, but he leaned his head into Sora’s chest anyway, Sora’s arms going automatically to wrap his shoulders like he belonged there, and he did.

Sora remembered growing up on the islands, a few over from Riku on the Destiny Archipelago, so that they had narrowly avoided crossing paths until college on the main island, but Riku’s dad had been a household name as long as he could remember. He’d discovered an ancient shark previously thought extinct nesting in the reefs, something important enough to the world to bring tourism and research and funding back to their sleepy islands, and with the funds, he’d created GUMMI, channeling everything back into the reef. He was as close to a homegrown hero as they’d ever really had.

Sora felt like he could be forgiven for being a  _ little bit _ starstruck the first time he had to tag a sea turtle next to Riku on his internship, Kairi looking on and occasionally pinching him to remind him he had a  _ job _ to do, the good looks of his partner not withstanding. 

It was like meeting a very niche, very geeky,  _ very _ cute celebrity. They had missed each other so many times as kids that Sora never stopped feeling fortunate that they’d found each other eventually .

“Part of me wishes he was here to see this,” Riku sighed. “But the other part thinks maybe it’s better he won’t see GUMMI being torn down. I just… can’t help but feel like I failed him, somehow.”

“Riku,” Sora said, clapping his hands around his head, as if to cover his ears. Riku’s bewildered expression was his reward. “Stop that. Now you’re the one moping.”

“I...” Riku huffed a laugh. “Yeah, guess I am.”

“We can find other options, other funds... I’m not giving up that easily. Neither should you. You’re not  _ alone _ here.”

“Mom always said I was the  _ realist _ in the family,” Riku murmured, smiling without humor.

“Yeah that’s why you have  _ me _ ,” Sora said, bending to thunk his chin down on Riku’s head. He tightened his arms until they were pressed so tight he could feel his heartbeat, always steady and true. He felt Riku’s smile against his throat even though he couldn’t see it. 

“Yeah. Guess you’re right—sometimes.”

“Hey—“ Sora said, in mock-offense.

“Yes?”

“I got nothing,” Sora admitted quietly, carding his hands through silky hair. “Jerk.”

“Knew it,” Riku said, pleased. “Nerd.”

For a second, Sora let him relax into the embrace, Riku’s arms encircling his middle, and they were the only two people in the world. Just the two of them, breathing, and hoping in their own little ecosystem, no matter where they were.

Riku tipped his chin back to stare up at him suddenly, and Sora moved back in turn to get his eyes to focus, and his smile had turned nervous. 

“Sora,” he said quietly.

“Yeah?”

“Since we’re leaving tomorrow and all...” Riku stopped, squeezed his eyes shut, then restarted. “I mean. I’ve been… meaning to say something to you for a while.”

Riku stood up abruptly, dislodging Sora until he reached out to steady him with a quiet “ _ Sorry _ ”. Sora took him in: both hands were curled into fists, which meant he was having a hard time getting something out, and he was…  _ steadily going red to his ears. Interesting. _

“Sora, I love you,” Riku started abruptly. “So  _ much _ . And… It’s been a long time.”

“A long… time,” Sora repeated slowly. It had actually been like, ten days, but this wasn’t the first time Riku lost him one sentence into a conversation.

“We’ve been together a long time,” Riku clarified.

“Five years next month,” Sora confirmed quietly. “Pretty long, yeah.”

“Right,” Riku said, but it came out like a  _ squeak _ . “Right. That’s a while. And I’ve loved every second of it, and you.”

“I love you, too,” Sora said, stepping forward to brush his bangs behind his ears back to see his eyes better. There they were, emerald green and  _ scared _ . “Riku, what’s going on? You’ve been weird since this morning. Like, beyond stress-weird.”

“ _ Nothing _ , I—just have to get something off my chest, I guess.”

“Are you… Wait. Are you trying to break up with me?” Sora paused. “On  _ GUMMI _ ?” Something about it made the idea infinitely  _ worse _ , that this sacred place would be defiled by this one moment, etched overtop the others in his memory banks for all of time.

“What? No, of course not! Is—is that what I sound like?” Riku grabbed both his hands as if to stop him from escaping, and Sora exhaled his relief against his chest.

“Okay, sorry. I just... You got so  _ serious _ all of a sudden. You usually don’t just... say stuff like that outright.”

“Oh. I… guess I don’t,” Riku admitted quietly, his hands encircling Sora’s.

“No, that’s… Just… Just the opposite—I—“ He stopped again, fiddling something in his pocket, then sighed. Riku removed one hand to massage his eyes behind the glasses, the crown bracelet Sora had given him for their anniversary sliding down with the motion and catching his eye. 

“Hey. Riku. Hey, it’s okay,” Sora soothed, framing his face with his palms. His skin was cool to the touch; he had always said Sora felt like a furnace in comparison, a personal sun. “It’s just me and you right now. Nobody else.”

Riku leaned his cheek into the contact, his eyes shut tight. “I know, that’s why I wanted to do this right, but I…”

“Breathe,” Sora told him. Riku tended to hyperventilate when he got nervous, and Sora was very well-versed in dealing with it. 

Riku complied, heaving a few breaths to stabilize himself. “Okay,” he said, almost to himself. 

Riku’s hand drifted down towards his pocket, and Sora was busy being trapped by his gaze, open and fond and  _ honest _ .

“I guess, what I’m trying to say is… Sora, will you—“

_ Beep. Beep. _

To his credit, Riku froze mid-motion, listening.

_ Beep. Beep. BEEEEEEEPPPP! _

Sora had to lean around Riku to see what was going on—he had muted the stream, but Xion had explicit instructions to override the mute for emergencies, so—

Behind Riku, on the blown-up screen, the entire chat scrolling by so quickly it became one mechanical scream of beeps,  _ was— _

“Riku,” Sora said, tugging at his arm. 

“Sora...?” Riku’s tone was hesitant and warbling, like a bird, and Sora wished he would just  _ turn around. _

“ _ Riku _ ,” Sora said, more insistently. He gripped his shoulder and pointed violently with the other. “ _ Look _ .”

His boyfriend got the hint, frowning—but twisted his head towards the screens.

There, the clearest shot they’d gotten so far, in the middle of the feed from Oathkeeper, was the mystery nudibranch—bright fluorescent pink with blue and white speckles across its back, and what looked like a single yellow marking splashed across its top, and it was the  _ most beautiful thing Sora had ever seen _ . It was bobbing across the sea floor leisurely, smack in the middle of the blown-up feed, sitting pretty on the hazy edge of a rock wall. 

One of them gasped.

“Is that—“

“Are you—“

“Yes, I’m sure,” Sora breathed. “Riku, I’m going.  _ Right now.  _ Tell me where to swim, you know I’m faster, but you know the reef, so—guide me. Let’s get this little shit if it’s the last thing we ever do in on GUMMI.”

“Go,” Riku said, pushing him gently away, and Sora has never loved him so much, even as he scrambled for his headset and maps. “I’ll be right behind you.”

Sora sprinted the distance to the wet deck, careening around corners and gritting his teeth against the feeling in his bones, of  _ go _ , and  _ now _ . The hydraulic door took thirty seconds too long to disengage, and Sora was nearly groaning when he finally shoved it open.

He nearly ricocheted like a pinball off the equipment closet, hopping one-legged into a wetsuit as he did the zipper with slippery, shaking fingers. Why was he so  _ sweaty _ already?!

“Sora,” Riku said fondly, picking up the equipment he’d strewn behind him. “You’re leaving debris everywhere. Come here.”

Sora was nearly vibrating by the time Riku had set everything in its place on his back: two air tanks, his vest, and regulator, all in order and accounted for. The mask was a little mildewy, but he slid it over his head all the same with a mumbled thanks as he turned to face him.

“Do me a favor and come back safe,” Riku said, his smile a little nervous, and brushed Sora’s bangs up to press a kiss above the mask.

“Riku! I’m just going like, a mile that way,” Sora insisted as he bent to secure his fins, one, then the other. “I’ve done that dive a million times.”

“Not like this, you haven’t. I want you to turn back if it gets too hairy, and keep an eye on your gauges.” Riku affirmed, then handed him his gloves and two flashlights.

“I’m always safe,” Sora reassured him, velcroing his gloves on.

_ “Safe _ is not the first word I’d pick to describe you,” Riku told him, his hands on his hips.

“Okay,  _ mom _ —then I’m always lucky,” Sora shot back. One final once-over found him presentable, so he stepped closer to Riku.

“I’m the lucky one,” Riku murmured, so of course Sora had to press up into him to kiss him properly, and Riku was warm, and his lips were soft, and Riku’s arms locked automatically around his waist. 

“Gross,” Sora said fondly, pulling back enough to speak.

“Disgusting,” Riku agreed, punctuating it with a kiss to his hair that sent Sora giggling. “absolutely,” another kiss pressed to his nose, “horrible,” he finished, with a final peck to his cheek. Sora returned it with one of his own, lingering so long on the pale skin it was faintly pink when they parted, and Riku tilted his jaw to press their lips together a second time.

“You’re distracting me again,” Sora huffed, and Riku disentangled himself slowly in response. 

“Then stop  _ being _ distracting.”

“You wish,” Sora laughed, but he let go of Riku’s hand with  _ extreme _ reluctance.

“I’ll be back,” Sora said softly. “First I’m gonna get this thing, and then I’m gonna save GUMMI, and  _ then _ we’re talking about whatever  _ that  _ was.”

“It’s funny,” Riku mused, “because when you say all that, somehow you make me believe it.”

“That’s my job,” Sora said, stabbing a thumb into his chest with a flourish. “Believing in us. No more _moping_ _Sora_.”

“That’s the Sora I know,” Riku said fondly, then turned away to gesture at the digital map he’d brought up on the wall monitors. “Follow the safety line to the gazebo by Oblivion, then bear west. I’ll guide you. You have about two hours of air, so we should be okay—if you’re quick.”

The fizzy high of a  _ mission _ , of an  _ objective _ he could capture with his own hands, bubbled in his blood and set his heart soaring. In his mind, he was  _ already _ holding the nudibranch, and all this was simply a memory.

One foot and then the other entered the pool at the edge of the wet deck. He shivered a little in the water, brown spikes bobbing for a moment before he dunked to wet his head, shuddering a little at the cold. “Oh, make sure you wake up Kairi—she’s going to be  _ so pissed _ if she misses us finding this thing, and then RGRC is gonna shit itself over denying us funding all this time, and I can’t  _ wait _ .”

“Let’s  _ not _ get ahead of ourselves,” Riku cautioned, then crouched to hand him a flourescent yellow spool. “Get on course first, and then I’ll worry about Kairi. Don’t forget your reel.”

Sora reached out to take it, the fluorescent yellow nearly blinding as he clipped it to the tanks on his back.

“I got this,” Sora affirmed, flashing his brightest grin. 

Riku flashed him the thumbs up, then stepped back out of splash range as Sora kicked twice and dove.

The water was black around his shoulders, and he inhaled once, glad the regulator was working, a little shakily, before steeling himself. He wouldn’t fail them, not when this was the most important thing he’d ever done.

Of all of them, Sora had always been the fastest swimmer. His mother always called him a dolphin, because he had the uncanny ability to read currents and the ocean’s mood before it had even figured out how it was feeling, and Sora understood it with the skill that seemed beyond human. His father, a fisherman, would take Sora out to the bow of the ship daily and let him stand at the top, eyes closed and simply listening, a small figure—usually in a yellow raincoat to offset the humid mist of the early morning around the coves—with his arms out to the sky as if waiting for it to fall into his hands.

He would let the sounds of the coming tides wash over him, and, like magic, he would tell his father if there would be storms or rip currents on the horizon.

Riku always told him he must have  _ exceptional sensitivity to drops in pressure _ . His mom told him he was magic. Privately, he liked to believe the latter. Also privately, he liked the feeling that Riku was a little envious of him, which was okay—because Sora was just as jealous of Riku’s mastery of the technical side of things.

They both loved the sea, so it was sometimes like a third person between them, but Riku had told him once that he was a little jealous of how much the sea loved Sora  _ back _ .

In any case, he thought of that now, mind burned with the image of the nudibranch, the quarry, the goal. Everything was swept away on fast tides except for that, in single-minded focus.

The water was more perilous without the penetrating rays of the sun to light his way, but Sora knew between the currents and Riku’s voice, softly echoing in his ears, he would be gently guided, a leaf on a stream. Something about the journey was strangely intimate, something shivery in his chest as his hands found the thick steel safety line that connected to one of the safety gazebos surrounding the station before proceeding out maybe a half-mile into the distance, and began to swim along it.

Starlight broke the surface at points, and a full moon peeked out over the sky far above, painting the coral forest in muted shades of night that made everything feel quiet. It wasn’t unsafe, but it felt internal, something like longing struck to life in his chest.

“You okay?” came Riku’s voice, crackly through the radio. “You’re on course so far.”

“Couldn’t let me go five minutes without checking in, could you?” Sora teased, feeling the cool, ever-present drag of the current along his sides like curious fingers. A few bright red squirrelfish had left their dens to watch, and he could see the lone shadow of Vanitas if he twisted over his shoulder, circling the base in aimless, careening circles. “I’m just too tempting.”

“Oh? You’d prefer I leave you alone out there?”

“I just think it’s cute that you worry.”

“Just a  _ reminder _ you’re still streaming,” Kairi said, her voice bemused. “So maybe warn me if you’re going to make any  _ really sappy comments  _ so I can mute you.”

Sora did not miss Riku’s strangled noise.

“Kairi!” Sora said, delighted, then quieted at her groan. “Sorry to wake you.”

“Nothing painkillers can’t fix,” she said gamely. “Like I would miss you discovering a new species and making Destiny marine bio history.  _ Honestly _ , Sora.”

“You sound as confident as he is,” Riku said, amusement coloring his tone.

“If anyone can do, this, Sora can,” Kairi said. “He makes miracles wherever he goes.”

“You can say that again,” Riku laughed, soft and fond. Sora thought of it as his _Sora_ _laugh_ , because it was only unveiled when Sora was involved. “Look at that, now I believe it, too. It’s contagious.”

“Sora power,” Kairi said solemnly. “See? The whole stream thinks so too. They’re all here cheering you on with little slug emojis.”

“Stop it, you guys are making me blush,” Sora muttered. “I’m gonna waste more oxygen if you embarrass me much more.”

Their echoed laughter filtered into his mask and made him close his eyes, guided by his grip on the line as he frog-kicked his way forward, fins slicing the water in a fast one-two glide. Like this, he could pretend he was back on the station with them, and that the looming shape of the coral ridge—one massive shadow as clouds moved to obscure the moon—that marked the edge of their little world wasn’t beckoning him forward. The slow bubbles of his oxygen obscured it as they rose, and he listened to the compressor’s regular sounds as he breathed, slow and deep, then picked up the pace, skimming the line with one hand as he made his way towards it as fast as he could.

Anxiety licked distantly at the edge of his consciousness—he was always more jumpy in the dark, especially in the water—but he pushed it down. He wouldn’t allow himself to entertain  _ not _ finding it.

“Let him focus, Kairi,” Riku’s voice came in. “Don’t want him more distracted than he already is.”

“ _ All _ business,” Kairi replied sarcastically. “Yes, sir. You got it.”

_ One _ nudibranch was surely no match for Sora’s hunting skills. And he would prove it.

_ One _ nudibranch was absolutely a match for Sora’s hunting skills.

Around an hour and a mile later, Sora finally came upon what he was dubbing  _ the drop zone. _

As if mocking him, the black chasm of the divide in the sea floor opened before him like a yawning maw, the sides pockmarked by various caverns and coral-speckled ledges, and a few half-formed crumbling walls like bridges to nowhere between them, courtesy of the lava tubes from the eruption. It was impossible to see how far it extended down; he knew the distance in feet, but there was a  _ big _ difference between knowing it and facing it, and watching with trepidation as unnamed specks disappeared down into it.

Right on the lip of the edge were Oathie and Oblivion, staring down like quiet witnesses to what he was about to do. Their wide-angle cameras would be able to chart his route better than his helmet camera could, for later. And, if the worst happened, well…

He wasn’t going to think about the worst.

Distance always felt more visceral underwater, when he gauged everything by his own body, his only unit of measure the length from his head to fins. Up close, it was more imposing than he’d thought.

“It’s… a really good thing I brought two tanks,” Sora said, swallowing against the feeling rising in his chest. He almost fumbled his second flashlight into the abyss before clipping it around his wrist. Two tanks, in case one failed.

“Are you okay?” Riku questioned softly. 

“Yeah!” Sora said quickly. “Yeah, it’s just… You know.” The fluorescent beam of his searchlight pushed the dark aside, and the uncertainty licked in its wake. “Now that I’m out here, staring at it, it’s…”

“If it’s too much,” Riku said quietly, “I want you to turn back. It’s not worth your safety.”

“No way,” Sora said, tightening his grip. “No  _ way _ I came this far to stop now.” He whipped his hand flashlight into the gathering dark, then switched the third one on his shoulder on for good measure. “Riku, use your massive brain. Where do I go from here?”

“ _ Massive brain, _ ” Riku repeated with a muffled laugh. “Well, you’re right at the point of the triangle. Look for the coral we spotted it on before. Based on the type, I would be surprised if there weren’t more around. I have a hunch it’ll glow in your flashlight beams.”

“Got it,” Sora said, infinitely more comfortable with something to start with. “Descending.”

Sora let himself drop off the ledge, twisting to face the canyon wall, then executed a wide search with his flashlight, scattering a school of large fish—he couldn’t even make them out, just the size of their long fins—that nearly sent him careering as he went. He had to do an awkward flip to right himself again, patting himself to make sure nothing was lost in the acrobatics.

“I’m fine!” he exclaimed quickly, hoping to get in front of Riku’s worry. “Just some fish.” The flashlight beam had gone high and wide, but he recovered it before it could fall.

“Sora,” Riku said, like he hadn’t heard at all. “Do that again.”

“What?” Sora thought back, picturing the motion. “Oh, this?”

The beam traveled high and right again, and when it caught on a ledge on the wall, something on it turned blindingly blue in the beam, unearthly and strange.

“Bingo,” Kairi said breathlessly.

“Follow that coral,” Riku said, curiously quiet. “Sora,  _ now _ .”

“On it,” Sora affirmed, using the wall to propel himself up the side like some awkward spider monkey, fingers scrabbling for purchase on the wall on his way up. 

He was rewarded with an opening in the rock, barely as wide as he was, and dark as night beyond. The coral ringed the opening and proceeded inside a little ways, further narrowing the passage, and it was impossible to tell how deep it went.

“This is new,” Riku said quietly. “I don’t… recognize it, it’s not on the maps.”

“This is the right coral, though,” Sora said, leaning close. “So…”

There was a current pulling from deep inside the cave, and Sora felt it tugging at his waist as he swam in place, hovering beside it, considering. A current meant there was an exit. Well, probably.

The only problem was… He pushed it down again.

“Sora,” Riku said, bringing him back to himself. “Are you  _ sure _ about this?”

“There might only be one way in,” Kairi said worriedly. “How do you plan to get out?”

“I brought the reel,” Sora said, unclipping it to tie it at the entrance securely, several knots deep. “I’m going in.”

“That wasn’t what I was talking about—“ Riku started.

“Here goes nothing,” Sora said over him, and with the reel clutched tightly in his hand, he squeezed himself in. 

Instantly, the current greedily  _ yanked _ his body forward, and it was only his tight grip on his lifeline that prevented him from losing it entirely. The hand flashlight clattered to the floor behind him and he couldn’t  _ catch _ it, caught in the whirlpool effect and jettisoned forward, knocking him into walls and dizzy spins as it went.

A series of branching tubes connected together, some opening without warning to the sky, so the effect was a wild strobe across his vision, and the current ripped him along so quickly he was barely aware of which he was being thrown down. Some primal fear took root in his heart as he realized he had lost all control of his body. Suddenly, he was six again, and in the helpless thrall of a wave pushed to shore by a hurricane, and Kairi was pulling him out, sputtering and crying, and—

_ And—ah _ , there it was: the fear he’d been pushing down this entire time, brought to bear as his final flashlight beam, hit too hard against the cave wall, dimmed and went out. He was the only one of their trio who had ever tried to go for his cave diving certification, but he’d never passed, because…

_ Because… _ .

“Riku—” He felt himself breathing faster, knew he shouldn’t because the last thing you wanted to do down here on  _ oxygen _ was  _ hyperventilate _ , but—

_Dark_ , his mind repeated. _Dark small dark small dark_. They shouldn’t have sent him, he couldn’t do this—exploring was one thing, but a cave that _was dark and tight and pressing in on him_ , that was different. Riku _knew_ that, knew about that time Sora had been stuck on his cavern dive test, paralyzed, for long minutes until Riku, always five steps behind, had risked himself to come save him as he lay there, gasping. He had been so _embarrassed._ What kind of marine biologist was afraid of the dark? But Riku had simply gathered him to his chest until he’d stopped shaking, and told him that everyone had _something to be scared of_.

“Sora,” Riku said instantly. “Sora, can you hear me?”

He did, but responding felt equally as hard, and—

“He’s breathing too fast,” he heard Kairi’s voice begin to crackle through the speakers before Riku shushed her, but the damage was done, and the panic merely layered itself on top of the existing terror until it felt like a boulder pressing him down.

“Sora. Listen to my voice,” Riku said, voice stalwart and steady in his ear. “Can you close your eyes?”

He had spent five years trusting Riku. He could spend five more minutes doing it, clinging to his lifeline as the current tried to pull him farther in. “Yeah. I—I think so.”

“Okay, The cavern isn’t that wide, so I want you to plant your feet. You should be able to stand.”

Sora did as he suggested, and his forward momentum was stalled a bit by the action.

Instantly, the impenetrable dark of the cave faded away. “That’s it. Just listen to me, okay? I can see for you.”

“Dunno how,” Sora heard himself joke weakly. “Darker than shit down here.”

“That’s what my glasses are for,” Riku joked, and Sora laughed breathlessly. Riku always made him feel better. “Do you still have the reel?”

“Uh,” he breathed, feeling blindly along his back, where it had been clipped. “Signs point to no.”

“Doesn’t matter. You’re doing great,” Riku assured. “Keep your hand along the wall, then walk forward ten paces. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

He nodded, then realized Riku probably couldn’t see it. “Got it.”

Carefully, he picked his way along, his hand trailing the wall, legs alternatively frog-kicking and carefully stepping behind him to propel him forward. It was easier with the option to stand, and with the cavern widening, it was less like a suction effect and more like a gentle suggestion. The low ceiling scraped against his suit at points, and he startled a few times, but Riku whispering encouragements in his ear made him keep going, against all odds.

Finally, he reached what felt like a step, and frowned. The cave felt like it was opening slightly, so he moved his hands farther apart to feel—and, yes, he was right. He scaled the rock and scrambled over the top, then nearly fell because Riku gasped suddenly in his ear.

“W-what?!” Sora said, clutching his heart. He swung around wildly and almost scraped his tank against the wall. “What happened?”

“Sora,” Riku said, a little breathless in his ear. “Oh— _ Sora, Sora _ .  _ Open your eyes _ .”

It took him a few seconds, steeling himself, but Kairi’s squeal buoyed him. He did, and was blinded.

The inside of the cave was so bright he fought not to shield his eyes against it—it looked  _ painted _ , like something  _ unreal _ , too bright for his brain to process. Disoriented, he dropped back against the wall, because he couldn’t be  _ seeing a sunset underwater _ , but he—he squinted, because that  _ wasn’t _ a sunset, and those  _ stars _ ...

What could easily have been  _ hundreds _ of nudibranchs lined the walls of the cavern, the bioluminescent pink and orange of their coats undulating as they moved, creating a living wave, a pulsing  _ wall _ of color. The cave floor and some of the walls were all coral, a riot of every shade imaginable, but so many of them were that black kind, glowing blue, because above them all, somehow the lava tube opened to the sky, and the moon beyond bathed the whole thing in light and set it  _ aglow _ .

They were all around him. Forget finding  _ one _ ; he had found the jackpot. A hidden cave system, far away from prying eyes or hunters, through an opening so small they never would have found it otherwise, and he was the first to see it.

A disbelieving little sound made its way up his throat, and he felt his own legs give out as he fell gracelessly to the cave floor.

“Riku…” There was so much in his words, so much he couldn’t hold the whole of it in his gloved palms. How strange, that one (or a hundred) little creatures could hold so many of his dreams.  _ Their _ dreams.

Years of wishing, and if this was the last thing they did on the ship, well—it was a pretty damn good thing.

“Can you get down there to the dip?” Kairi’s voice sounded a little wet. 

He used his weight to drop down to the depression in the floor, hovering just over a long ridge of purple and orange coral shaped into long tendril-like fingers. There was a single nudibranch inching its slow way along the top, and Sora leaned over to ensure his head camera was getting it. 

“That’s perfect,” she told him. “Stay  _ right _ there.”

There it was, plain as day, and barely as long as the finger he held up as a rudimentary measurement tool: the yellow star-shaped marking on the body, the fluorescent pink all around, and the white frosting of the underbelly and the frills and the fuchsia of the antenna altogether like a little sunset on the islands. In fact—he squinted—it kinda reminded him of...

“A  _ paopu _ ,” Riku and Sora said at once. A disbelieving laugh worked its way from Sora’s throat, until he was doubled over and shaking with it, adrenaline and joy and terror all at once. “Riku, it’s a  _ paopu _ !”

“I see it,” Riku said, his voice all thick and whispery in a way Sora didn’t recognize. “It’s… I don’t know what to say.”

“You think our destinies are intertwined because we found it?” Kairi mused, and Sora nodded violently, knowing the stream would see it, and all of them shared a laugh.

Sora cupped his hands around a pair that were stretching up from the peak of a coral, towards the skylight, and let them slide easily onto his gloved hands. So what if he was a hypocrite, after what he told the stream earlier? He hadn’t waited two years to  _ not  _ touch one. They were feather-light and so small in the cage of his hands, and he felt his eyes filled with delayed tears, blinking fast at their burn to keep them away. It wouldn’t do to cry here, not until he was back to safety and in Riku’s arms.

“Sora, the stream is asking who gets to name it,” Kairi cut in. “What do I tell them?”

“Put it to a vote,” Sora said. “Everyone helped me find it, so everyone should get a chance to say.”

“Okay,” Kairi said. “Don’t blame me for the inevitable  _ Nudi nude _ .”

“The species Sora discovers  _ would _ be called  _ Nudi nude, _ ” Riku quipped, fond and exhausted.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Sora said, holding the nudibranch up to his helmet camera for a close up. “It’s  _ beautiful _ , no matter what we name it.”

“No  _ way _ that’s real,” Kairi said into his headset, researcher mode re-established. “I’ve never seen markings like that—not so consistently, anyway… They all seem to have them, too.”

“Yeah, Kairi, somebody  _ totally _ came down here with an airbrush and did all this to mess with us,” Sora said, so giddy he felt stupid with it.

“Shut up, Sora,” she laughed. “I’m just… I can’t  _ believe _ it. They're really  _ real _ . And they’re beautiful.”

“Oh? Do we have a research convert after all? Gonna jump ship and study sea slugs with the rest of the peasants?” Riku’s teasing voice came through, and Sora felt himself smiling automatically.

“ _ Absolutely not _ ,” she said, and it sounded like she punched Riku in the shoulder if his  _ ow _ was anything to go by. “They would kill me. But… maybe just for today. They’re… really  _ cute _ up close. I’m not quitting cephalopods anytime soon, but… I guess I get it now.”

“Ah,” said Riku knowingly. “That’s how it starts.”

“He’s right,” Sora agreed. “You’ll be  _ back _ . You’ve gotten a taste of slug and now you’ll  _ never _ have enough.”

“You’re both so  _ weird _ sometimes,” Kairi said, her laughter showing in the headset. “But I guess you’re my kind of weird. Can’t believe you did it.”

“Course we did,” Sora said, puffing his chest proudly. “I never doubted us for a  _ second _ . Right, Riku?”

“ _ Okay _ , okay,  _ hero _ ,” Riku laughed into his headset. “ _ Maybe  _ get back to base before you waste  _ all _ of the rest of your air bragging.”

Sora jumped, then glanced back at his air level, laughing sheepishly. “O-oops. Actually…” He stared down at his fins in thought. “I kind of… lost my flashlights.” And… “And I  _ just _ remembered I dropped the reel somewhere when I got put into the spin cycle.”

“We know,” Kairi said. “That’s why Riku’s already coming to meet you.”

“He—what?!” Sora nearly dropped the slugs in surprise, and they bristled threateningly at him until he carried them back to relative safety.

“Stay where you are. He’s bringing extra lights and a safety line and he’s going to guide you back out the way you came.”

One part of him flared to life—embarrassed and angry that he’d need a  _ babysitter—but _ the other half, the half that kept replaying his tumble through the cave, was glad beyond words that Riku knew him so well he didn’t have to  _ say _ any of it. Love flared to life in his chest, and he wanted to cry again.

“He just couldn’t resist getting a look at them himself, could he?” Sora joked, wishing he could wipe at his eyes. “Typical Riku.”

“Couldn’t let you have  _ all _ the credit when we publish the paper on this later,” Riku teased, and oh, Sora  _ loved _ him so much for it. “I’m outside the station already. Be there soon.”

True to his word, it was only a matter of minutes before a beam of light carved its way into the mouth of the cave, slow and methodical, and the relief Sora felt was beyond anything he’d ever felt before. And, well, if his helmet cam caught a solid five minutes of him clinging to Riku, then so what? He deserved it, after all he’d done today.

With one last look over his shoulder—one more to memorialize this moment for all of time, the coral glowing soft and otherworldly and the nudibranchs scattered in and over it—he felt for Riku’s hand.

“Guide me home?” Sora asked.

“Always,” Riku answered, like an old call and response. Their gloved hands slotted together tightly, and though he couldn’t make out Riku’s face, he knew it would be smiling.

“C’mon. We’ll go together.”

The swim back barely registered in his mind—all he felt was the desperate, vibrating sensation of joy trapped behind his ribcage, so bright and insistent he swam faster than he ever had, the only sensation like a tether from the station to his heart, and Riku’s voice soft in his ears, and Riku’s hand in his hand (the whole way, even after they left the cave system) guiding him home.

He wanted to fly, but he was swimming, and that was the next best thing, so he executed a few dizzy spins for the benefit of the stream, and a school of tiny angelfish scattered before him like moonlight-silvered stars.

The second his head broke the surface of the wet deck, he shook himself like a dog before scrambling up and over the ledge, tripping over his own fins so Riku had to step forward to catch him by the arms.

“Did you see me?! Did you see that?”

In his haste, the mask and his equipment went flying somewhere off into the corner, and he caught Riku’s wince but didn’t care, because he was jettisoning himself forward to slam into him, wetsuit and all.

“Yes, Sora,” Riku laughed, spinning him once with the momentum. “I saw. Try not to break the regulator.”

“It was so— _ so _ !” He lacked the words, so he just pulled Riku tighter against him instead. “You know?!”

“I  _ know _ . You did it.”

“ _ We _ did it.”

They leaned in at the same time to press their foreheads together, and it was only through years of practice that Sora slowed himself to make it less collision and more a pleasant  _ bonk. _

Sora slipped his hands under Riku’s curtain of hair to brush his neck, so he shivered a little from the cold, and Sora whispered an apology. Riku’s breath was warm, ghosting over the cold clinging to his skin, and Sora wanted to lean into it until it was  _ all _ he could feel, Riku’s arms locked around him and his heart still beating flush to the brim with adrenaline, and Riku’s eyes filling his vision with emerald behind his glasses.

“You okay?” Riku asked. “You had me really worried for a second there.”

“I’m  _ great _ ,” Sora enthused. “I knew you’d catch me.”

“Sora…” Riku got that  _ look _ in his eyes again, the one that made Sora weak and sappy and need to kiss him right now, immediately, so he did, even when Riku’s surprised hum made it a little awkward.

“Hey,” Riku said softly, cupping Sora’s face with his own hands. “You’re  _ freezing _ .”

“Did you know you’re  _ really _ pretty?” Sora felt helium in his feet, euphoria bubbling into the space between his hands. 

“That’s definitely the shock talking, but thanks,” Riku quipped, examining both of Sora’s pupils intently, and Sora could barely make out a smirk beneath the cone of his vision.

“No, I  _ mean _ it.”

“Okay, so tell me again in an hour when I know you’re out of that freezing suit and under some blankets.”

But Sora _did_ mean it, with every cell in his shivering body, because Riku had done nothing but buoy him and lead him when he couldn’t see a way out their entire lives, and it was high time he had _told him that, but how?_ The thought tumbled down and gathered itself in memories, and then _stuck_ on the memory of Kairi calling him a widow, of Riku’s nerves, of… _it’s been_ _a long time._

Sora opened his mouth to say something, but what tumbled out instead— tangled mess of feelings that tripped over itself on the way across his tongue, was:

“Riku. Marry me.”

That was the thing about Sora: his heart always seemed to know the words before his head had quite caught up.

There was silence in the room while Riku’s face busied itself from going from frozen in its tracks, to wide-eyed, to scarlet, before Sora had even blinked once. The fast-moving blush crept all the way down beneath his glasses, past his collarbones, and disappeared into the confines of his wetsuit. “Um,” he managed, then. “S-Sora?”

_Oh no_ , Sora’s mind said. You _asked him to marry you_ _on the wet d_ eck. 

You _ smell like wet dog and you asked him to marry you.  _

_ And _ , Sora’s heart then realized with dawning horror:  _ He also had no follow up. _

_ This _ was decidedly  _ not _ the attempt that he’d spent years daydreaming about, in his weaker, more romantic moments, which contained giving Riku some big stupid vocal number (Sora, sadly, really couldn’t carry a tune) with heart balloons that he would probably  _ hate _ but would  _ deserve _ because Riku deserved  _ all _ the big sappy tap dancing numbers about love he could fit into a ten-minute window. 

But it was  _ fine _ , he could work with this—he scrambled to string enough thought together to save face, but it was hard to hear over the incessant, siren-like wailing of his nervous system tripping into overdrive.

“I—I didn’t mean—”  _ Woah, Sora _ . Backtrack. “I mean, I do, I  _ really really _ mean—” He fumbled for a second, torn between grabbing Riku’s hand to keep him from leaving and letting him go to spare them both the awkwardness of this moment. In the end, he grabbed one of Riku’s with both of his own, steeling himself as he raised his chin to face him.

“Sora,” Riku said weakly, his eyes flitting to something above their heads like he was looking for an exit, and Sora’s heart nearly broke. 

He launched himself at Riku, locked his arms around that warm back and pressed his face so close to his shirt he could smell and feel everything  _ Riku _ . “Wait!” He sounded pathetic, he knew, but in his defense this was going wildly off the rails. “Wait. Just… Give me a minute.”

In the silence that followed, all Sora heard was the blood rushing in his ears and the quiet beeping of the machinery, and Riku’s heartbeat going double-time under his ear, and the safety of his arms and it was a repeat of this morning so intense he ached with it. So much was changing, but so much was just the same, just perfect as it always was, and he was twenty again and brushing hands with Riku over a sea turtle and feeling his stomach flip over and stealing glances because he was so beautiful, something Sora knew but didn’t Know until he loved him and Riku loved him back, and now Sora was trying to make him a slightly bigger promise, not so different than that  _ first _ one, and Sora suddenly knew what to say.

“Riku. You’re _ really cool _ and  _ amazingly smart _ and keep me from burning the grilled cheese because I got too into reading articles again, and I love you so, so much. I want to keep going to the bottom of the sea and studying sea slugs that look like your eyes with you until we’re so ancient and gray and creaky that they won’t  _ let us  _ go anymore, and then sneak out and go  _ anyway _ . So… What do you say?”

Of all the ways he expected this going, Riku breaking slowly into a quiet, huffing laugh that turned into something louder and resonant and disbelieving, vibrating up his shoulders and scrunching his face into something open and amused and beautiful—was not one.

“Sora,” he said, then stopped. “You don’t even know—you—“ something like a  _ squeak _ made its way out of his throat, and only his arms around Sora kept him from melting into the floor in mortification. “ _ God _ , I love you so much.”

Sora pulled back to frown into his face. Was laughing… good? Usually people wound up crying or something, but… well, Riku was  _ always _ doing what he didn’t expect him to.

“You’re… giving me mixed signals here, Riku.”

The next thing he knew, Riku was cupping his jaw and smiling against his lips.

“ _ Yes _ , you  _ goof _ . Of course I will.” His glasses were digging into Sora’s cheek, but he didn’t care. “As long as you want me.”

“That’s lucky for me, because I was thinking I want you, you know, forever,” Sora rasped, and that’s when he realized  _ he _ might’ve been the one crying, and Riku was alternatively wiping his tears away and pressing kisses to his cheeks. What was supposed to go after this? He’d forgotten…  _ something. _

“Oh. Wait. I—um. I… don’t have a ring,” Sora said, patting the pockets of his wetsuit like he would find one he’d hidden and forgotten about, then looking up helplessly, hair dripping slowly into his eyes.

“You just…” Riku stopped, now wiping tears from his  _ own _ eyes. “You  _ just _ thought of that  _ now _ ?”

If Sora wasn’t so absurdly giddy, he probably would be  _ more _ indignant at how Riku was helplessly laughing  _ again _ . The way he was leaning, Sora was probably the only thing holding him upright, his thick arms slung around his shoulder like some massive hunk of tree branch slowly surrendering to the pull of gravity.

“What?!” Sora squawked, punching Riku squarely in the side, even though he wouldn’t feel it through the wetsuit padding. He  _ deserved _ it.

“ _ Sora _ !”

“What?! I—didn’t really  _ plan _ this!! I just came back, and you were just— _ standing _ there, just like that, and I just—”

“Oh, so it’s  _ my _ fault?”   


“Yes!” Sora yelled, but then he was laughing too, both of them teetering on their axis. 

“Lucky for you,  _ I _ have a backup plan.”

“You… do?” 

Riku took a moment to straighten up, then turned to rummage in his hastily discarded pile of clothes until he produced a brilliant blue box. “Earlier, I was trying to… You know. Ask. And then the nudibranch happened, and…” Riku shook his head. “I don’t know what I expected, trying to  _ plan _ a proposal for you.”

“Wait a minute. Earlier. That whole— _ that’s _ why you were being so weird? You were trying to  _ propose _ ?!” At Riku’s nod, Sora punched him again, this time in the arm.

“ _ Riku _ ! I had no idea! I didn’t even know you wanted to get married!”

“Clearly!” Riku laughed again, pulling Sora tight to his chest. “It’s okay. I liked yours better. Can’t believe you stole my thunder, though.”

Riku gently disentangled his hand from Sora’s to unhook the tiny key-shaped clasp, and the gold of the ring caught the blue lights of the station and  _ shone.  _ In the center was a tiny, star-shaped sapphire, perfect in its simplicity.

“Can I…” Sora licked his suddenly dry lips, then flicked his eyes up to Riku’s. One part of him really couldn’t believe this was happening, and the other was trying not to bawl. “Can I borrow it for a sec?”

“Sora,” Riku said fondly. “It’s  _ your _ ring.”

“Good point.”

In the next second, Sora had plucked the ring from the velvet in shaking fingers and slid it onto Riku’s pinky, because it was clear it was too small even for Riku’s slender ring finger—obviously, since it was meant for Sora.

“There!” Sora proclaimed. “Now it’s official.”

Riku only shook his head, and fixed Sora with a look so full of  _ warmth _ he nearly dissolved, and Sora shot him a watery grin.

“This doesn’t mean you get out of the speech, I hope you know,” Sora said warningly, and Riku shook the bangs from his eyes.

“I thought you’d say that,” Riku said, then leaned back to stare at the spot above Sora’s head again. “Kairi, can you switch the stream off for a while? I have something to say to my fiancé.”

_ The stream  _ hit every nerve on the way down Sora’s body and sent them ringing. He’d…  _ totally _ … forgotten about it.

“Awww, Riku! Just when it was just getting good,” Kairi’s voice teased over the loudspeaker. “But roger that, blue captain. You have t-minus ten minutes before I’m coming down there to take ten billion photos and scream, over.”

Her image blipped out suddenly with the sound, and the silence was deafening.

“I left the video feed of the wet deck running,” Riku began. “Figured I’d catch our  _ triumphant return _ . But, as  _ usual _ , you did something I didn’t expect, and I couldn’t exactly stop you in the middle of  _ all of that _ .”

Sora laughed nervously. “So that’s why you…” Riku nodded, flicking his eyes up at the wall monitor above their heads until Sora twisted to, catching a glance of the magnitude of the screaming. “Oh.  _ Oh _ . O-oh. I just. Said all that…  _ live _ .”

“You proposed to me in front of roughly ten thousand people,” Riku confirmed. “I didn’t even get a chance to tell you we made our funding goal right before you came back,” Riku laughed. “Thought I’d surprise you, but… Guess you surprised me first.”

“I still wanna hear your speech,” Sora mumbled wetly into his neck, fingers curling into the fabric across his back. 

“You sure? It’s gonna be hard to follow that one up. I might not fulfill expectations.”

_ “No way _ are you getting out of it that easy,” Sora said, holding eye contact with what he hoped was a serious expression. “Ask me.”

Riku exhaled, steeled himself, fixed him with an unspeakably tender gaze, then slowly dropped to one knee, his thumb drawing circles on Sora’s hand as he looked up at him.

“Sora… Every day I’ve known you has been an adventure. And I  _ love _ that. Even the unplanned ones— _ especially _ them—because any one you take with me is the best. So, what do you say to one more?”

“Riku,” Sora said, suddenly breathless. “That’s…” And yeah, it  _ was _ pretty good.

“Is that a yes?”

“Who else is gonna make sure I take flashlights with me on my dives?” Sora said, grinning so wide his cheeked ached with it. “It’s a yes. Definitely.”

“Good,” Riku said. “Because this really is  _ your _ ring.”

Riku smoothly slid the ring from his own finger to Sora’s, already skin-warmed, and it fit perfectly, because Riku planned all things to perfection. The metal against his freckled knuckles was as perfect as he’d ever dared to imagine it.

“I love it,” Sora said quickly, already pawing at tears now free-flowing down his face. “A-and I love you,” he sobbed, hiccuping through the whole thing, and suddenly he was very glad he had gone  _ first _ , because Riku had risen with his tug and was thumbing at his tears and framing his face and meeting his mouth with his own all at once, and if he didn’t know better he would have blamed the pressure in the ship for his spinning head. “Rikuuuuu!”

Then, Riku’s hands slid around to his lower back and he was dipped like they were in a silly romance novel, and Riku was kissing him and his hand was warm under Sora’s shirt and Sora’s hand went to cradle the back of his neck and they were both laughing into it, it so it was pretty bad but perfectly  _ them _ all the same.

“See? We found a previously undiscovered species, got engaged, and saved the station in the same night. I’d call that a pretty successful research trip!”

“Was that all today?” Riku said, his eyes sparkling.

“Sure was, fiancé.” Maybe he was grinning stupidly, but maybe Riku was, too, and maybe they had both fucked it up but it was gonna be okay, like it always was, because it was  _ them _ . 

Kairi’s voice crackled over the intercom just in time to break them up.

“You decent?” she asked, and Sora heard Riku snort in his ear before releasing him. Both of them were bright red and messy and kiss-swollen, but yeah. They were decent.

“Yeah, we’re decent,” Sora told her.

“Just thought you’d like to know that the votes are in,” Kairi said. “ _ Fishforgayrights27 _ won. Check it out.”

Hand in hand, with matching grins, they glanced up at the monitor, which was playing looped footage from Sora’s dive in a series of supercuts, probably courtesy of Xion, with a series of overlaid fireworks and other graphics on the screen. It was even more  _ dramatic _ than it had felt, and the chat was spinning by so fast Sora could barely see it—all he caught were a few screenshots of Sora and the ring and a lot of crying, but he couldn’t think about  _ that _ right now. 

“Don’t keep us waiting, Kairi,” Riku called.

“Drum roll, please!” Xion’s voice cracked over the video instead, so Sora slapped one out on Riku’s chest to his amused chuckle. 

“Congratulations, boys,” Kairi continued. “Your new species is named… _Chromodoris_ _bumpis_.”

Sora doubled over into a wheeze almost immediately. “I love it,” he said fiercely. “It’s  _ perfect _ .”

“RGRC is going to  _ hate _ that so much,” Riku observed, as his hand massaged Sora’s back, and one side of his mouth quirked into a smirk. “The cheapest researchers they have just made the biggest breakthrough they’ve had in years, and we let the public name it.”

“I don’t care what  _ they _ think—donations just keep pouring in,” Kairi said in a rush. “ _ Two _ Destiny news stations already called, they want to talk to you both right away. I can’t  _ believe _ it— but we did it, somehow.”

“Your dad would be proud of us,” Sora whispered, quiet, so only Riku could hear, and he didn’t mind Riku hiding his face in his shoulder as he shook a little, snuffling.

“The live underwater base proposal didn’t hurt,” Xion said, grinning. A video window popped up in front of the stream, and Sora assumed she could see them, as well. “Congrats, by the way.”

“You can say that again!” Another head popped into the frame of Xion’s room, this time framed by blond hair. ”About fuckin’ time! Thought I’d be standing next to Sora with a walker by the time you two finally got it together.”

“I knew they’d figure it out,” Naminé said from somewhere offscreen. “ _ Eventually _ .”

“Yeah right, Naminé,” Roxas rebutted, twisting his head to look back at her. “ _ You _ bet me Sora wouldn’t do it for another six months,” he continued, then pointed at Vanitas, who came into view as Xion finally turned the camera to expose the other half of the room, and a series of people on chairs, beanbags, and sometimes the floor, all crammed together. “And  _ you _ bet me a year, so. Pay up.”

Silently, she sipped her tea, but passed Roxas a crumpled bill. Vanitas followed suit, grumbling the whole time, more stabbing than passing it.

“Really, Vani? You bet against Sora?” Another voice whistled, and the camera focused on a set of curious blue eyes and a person clambering over Vanitas to see the screen. “That’s harsh.”

“Ven, get the fuck off me,” Vanitas grumbled. “I’m trying to see my cousin, move.”

“He’s my cousin,  _ too _ , asshole,” Ven shot back, shoving each other in and out of frame, Xion sliding over with a laugh to sit between them.

“Roxas! Vanitas! Ven!” Sora called with delight. “Thought you were all on a research trip until next year!”

“Like I’d miss a chance to witness Riku inevitably fucking this up,” Vanitas snickered, and Ven shoved him more firmly out of screen. “Did he even get through the speech, or—“

“What Vani is  _ trying _ to say is we’re  _ very _ happy for you,” he spoke over him. “And we can’t wait for you to get back to dry land so we can party  _ right _ . It’s gonna be RGU all over again.”

“Whole family’s back together again,” Riku observed wryly, and the video feed dissolved into bickering and too many people talking at once. The sound echoed off the walls and made the hull feel fuller than it had in ages, almost as full as Sora’s heart.

“Sure is,” he agreed.

“I’ll do you one better,” Riku cupped his hands to call over the chaos. “Why don’t we have the party in the GUMMI ship?”

“Wha—you  _ serious _ ?” Ven said, pressing close to the screen, his eyes wide and full of promise.

“Really?” Sora said, glancing up to read his face, but Riku was simply smiling.

“Who’s going to stop us?” Riku said, shrugging, and a little mischievous smile played on his lips. “My dad left it to me, and at this rate it looks like we might be able to buy it back.”

“You know what, Sora? Changed my mind. Turns out Riku’s a pretty okay guy,” Roxas deadpanned. “You have my blessing. Even if he’s a slug lover.” 

Riku yelled “ _ Thanks, asshole _ !” over the cacophony.

Joyous whoops and excited conversation made it impossible to make out anything else that was being said, and the sound was loud and swelling and Sora didn’t think he could  _ get _ any happier, but  _ Riku _ , as always, had proved him wrong.

“Guys…” Sora said quietly, sniffling, but it was useless, the tears were pricking his eyes and demanding he scrub at them with his arms, so Riku set above smoothing his hand across his back soothingly. 

“Aw, you’re making him cry,” Kairi’s voice popped back in. “I  _ told _ you not to bombard them! Behave!”

“No, it’s okay! I just—” he hiccuped loudly, “— _ missed _ all of you and I forgot how much until right  _ now _ .”

“Someone better go with him to get the rings for the wedding,” Roxas sighed. “Else he’d probably forget those too.”

“Hope that means  _ you’re _ volunteering,” Vanitas said wryly, and Roxas punched him in response. “Only because I don’t trust you at  _ all _ .”

“Y… You  _ all _ saw that, huh?” Sora asked sheepishly, and everyone present laughed good-naturedly. “How did you guys know?”

“I invited everyone over this morning,” Xion said with a grin. “We all knew  _ Riku’s _ plans, so we were camped out here for the day, waiting,  _ but… Yours _ were kinda a surprise.”

Sora had to hide his face in Riku’s chest, grateful once again for the curtain of hair. “You have this guy to thank for that,” Riku chuckled. “He’s always surprising us, isn’t he?”

“And I’m gonna keep doing it!” he said, his chin tilted up against Riku’s sternum, grinning so hard it hurt. “ _ Forever _ ,” he whispered conspiratorially.

Sora heard a smattering of snickers, then something suspiciously like “gross” and Kairi’s voice saying “ _ privacy _ ” before the monitor clicked off.

“Forever, huh?” Riku whispered back, his eyes a little glassy as he pulled him up. “I like the sound of that.”

When Sora reached up to twine his arms around Riku’s neck, it was with the practiced ease of years—and, suddenly the thought struck him, how easy would it be in  _ five _ more?  _ Twenty _ ? Euphoria washed him over, gentle as the waves on the island at high tide, gentle as Riku’s bright eyes, kind and soft.

“Yeah. Sorry, we don’t accept returns or takebacks.”

Riku’s palm on his cheek was calloused and careful, his fingers dancing along his chin and tracing the line of his smile before he leaned down.

“Don’t worry, I never would.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it to the end, thank you for reading and continue on for many of my notes.
> 
> The dividers in this fic were drawn by me! I thought a visual for the nudibranch Sora discovered would be helpful for readers.
> 
> This fic was a true and tedious labor of love that is based on very real concepts, such as:
> 
> 1) The GUMMI ship is based on a very real, very functioning undersea research lab called the Aquarius Reef Base, and if you want to understand how close we are to living in a sci-fi novel, check it [out here.](https://aquarius.fiu.edu/dive-and-train/facilities-and-assets/aquarius-undersea-laboratory/index.html) It was actually threatened with being shut down a few years ago, but was saved by the Florida International University, which is a triumph for marine scientists everywhere. Fun fact: the longest anyone has spent down there is 31 days straight, which is the current world record.
> 
> 2) Sora's streams are based on real live marine biology streams run by scientists that are often conducted from places like Aquarius. I also borrowed some concepts from [Nautilus](https://nautiluslive.org/) and added more of a twitch component for the fic.
> 
> 3) The Radiant Garden Restoration Committee is based on very real foundations whose mission it is to grow coral from scratch in order to repopulate dying or damaged reefs, like the Great Barrier Reef. Check out the [Coral Restoration Foundation](https://www.coralrestoration.org/) for more on that!
> 
> 4) The scientific name I borrowed for the fic is real--Chromodoris is a genus of nudibranch, and scientists who discover new species often get a lot of free reign with names. My favorite ever is a shrimp named after [pink floyd.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synalpheus_pinkfloydi)
> 
> Hit me up on twitter @dispositiongay if you want to nerd out or hear me talk about Aquarius and/or Soriku for several hours straight.


End file.
